


none speaks, none heeds

by Anonymous



Category: Lake of Voices (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 37,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29484636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: [Post Connection ending]Kikka makes her peace with living her days out on the island, but the world doesn't make peace with each other in her absence. With nearby towns coming to heel under its new military occupants, Sinnlos must decide on a path forward when the Guide becomes an emblem of a different kind.
Relationships: Kikka & Lu (Lake of Voices), The Guide & Kikka (Lake of Voices), The Guide/Kikka (Lake of Voices)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 4
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	1. littoral

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kanadka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanadka/gifts).



> Dear Kanadka,
> 
> I cannot say thank you enough !! for your promo post on Lake of Voices, through which I never would have discovered this visual novel on my own, and which has rapidly consumed all my attention. All your prompts spoke to me and I had so much fun piecing together an image of Sinnlos and its inhabitants, and wondering what kind of person Kikka would be after such a nightmare. In fact, I would have loved to have written even more.
> 
> I hope this scratches an itch for you. Happy reading. <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A beginning and an ending.

The start of the new beginning were not days Kikka thought of often. They blurred into unmeasurable moments where the sun rose and fell and life became a flat circle.

The reality was, there was no life for her to return to, not after the destruction of the people she’d failed to protect, not after letting Hemer fall to the hands of bandits. Not after giving up her humanity for a chance for — what? Confinement.

Sinnlos looks like spilled ink. It flickers along the shore with the breeze, only translucent at the edges, where rocks and grass poke through the murk.

The Guide may have said the water wouldn’t harm her, but it’s already robbed her of everything else. She skirts past the edges of it every morning, wearing a trail through the beach that loops halfway toward the greenest part of the island — here, there are large boulders she climbs to be level with the fog. At sunrise, she’s dyed in pink and orange and it almost feels like she’s not on an island at all.

It’s here that she spies the Guide after his work — she wonders if he’d been coming to this island long before he decided she could turn it into her home. He stands further inland than she’d expect of a man born from this body of water, arms wrapped around himself and into the deep green of his cloak, and Kikka wonders if this is what he did at the half-way island only so many days ago: stood on the precipice of his home, a silent, stalwart guardian, and waited for the nightmare to be over.

Kikka doesn’t think about it too hard. The real goal of these walks is just to stretch her legs. She can forgive herself such small distractions.

Regardless, she pulls a ration from her bag, the last of her dried food from the expedition when she’d still considered the long route, and watches the Guide from the corner of her eyes. He’s the most curious sight around, secondary to the lake itself, and third to the island, which she’d walked twice after the first two days, eager to get to know the perimeter, places where she could hide when the grief over took her, sudden and violent.

Still, it’s a shock when he’s suddenly there at her shoulder, inspecting her. She stares at the ground when she wipes crumbs from her mouth. The breeze is cold, and she’d enjoyed being hunched over like a small animal.

The hems of his cloak are dark from dew. “How much food do you have left?” he asked.

“This is it,” she said flatly.

“I assumed you hadn’t had much. Here.”

For the first time Kikka sees the strap across his shoulder, the bag against his leg. “I went to Lynd last night. There’s food and clothing for you here. I realize you will need more, but until we establish a list, this will have to work.”

Kikka holds her breath. Her own garments were stale, and every morning it was a shock to smell herself, and there was little in the way of privacy that allowed for a thorough washing. “You went out of your way — thank you.”

His eyes flicker. “You’re welcome. Forgive us for not expecting the company,” he says, which is almost nothing at all, just a cordial acknowledgment that he’s said what he needed to. At the urging of his own kind, maybe — they had welcomed her company as generously as Lu.

She folded the cloth closed in her lap and reached into her bag. It was the same as when she’d left — still heavy with money from her pension, plus funds for other needs along the road she’d meant to travel — now little more than useless. Bemelle had passed her his because he didn’t trust he’d keep it safe, or maybe now he’d wanted to make her feel needed. And she’d use it to buy herself some dignity.

Wordlessly, she offered it.

The Guide stared down his nose at it. “You needn’t give me that.”

“What will I do with it?”

“That’s...”

“Consider it payment for services.” She shook it, once. “Please just take it. It does me no good and I’m fully aware of how inflated prices are around Sinnlos.”

He pocketed it almost gently. “Yes, I’m afraid that’s much to do with us.”

The conversation turned stilted. Kikka rubbed warmth into her hands, then:

“How is…”

The Guide simply looked at her.

“Never mind,” she said. Kikka traced a crack in the rock with her nail. These rocks had been submerged at some point, she thinks. There’s lines of black and marbling running through them like stains.

He scuffed his boots in the dirt and sighed. “I advise not torturing yourself with things you can do nothing about.”

“Right,” Kikka said. She thought about jabbing him in the leg. “I’ll only concern myself with what I say to you.”

The Guide’s mouth twitched at the edges. Unbelievably, she recalls that the man does laugh, is very capable of it, and remembers who else’s laugh was even larger than them both, and that that person is no longer there to share it with her.

Kikka stood, brushing crumbs off her legs. “I’m always going to want to know. That… was my world,” she finishes lamely.

“I understand.” The Guide looked at her calmly. “I’ll bring you things as you need them,” he said. Kikka hugged the bag to her chest, kept neat and tidy under the protection of his coat.

“Have you seen Lu this morning?”

“He’s occupied, but he’ll come around. Enjoy the quiet while it lasts.” And then he was off, calm strides as he paralleled her old trail in the sand, hair nearly yellow as the sun swept higher and higher, burning off the frightening calm of the night.

Kikka dug her nails into her hand and started to walk.

She needed to practice her forms before she forgot that, too.

“Scoldings,” Lu cried, “endless amounts, like it’s my first day of existence all over again —”

Kikka doesn’t have to know much to intern: “They must love you.”

Lu shakes his head. “No no nooo, it’s about pride and tradition, things I’ve felt no calling or obligation to. I’m not even a good nixi,” he bites out. “Damage is cumulative, Kikka. There may be a time where I’ll be forced to make a decision again. And then — it really will be over. In the meanwhile, I’m on probation.”

“I don’t mind the company.”

“I’m glad, because you’re the only one I get along with now.”

Lu does something — has done something — that makes Kikka want to crawl into his bubble until he lets her in.

He’s too quick to judge himself, but there’s an undercurrent of openness in him that makes her want to follow after. It’s just how he operates, she thinks. In the human world, his charisma would have meant something to a lot of her kind, too. The kind of young person that spurs another into the action of the proactive accomplice. Not that they’re committing crimes. At least, Kikka knows that her arrival has shattered a lot of notions of tradition.

“Anyway.” Lu stretched his arms and then shaded his eyes to look at her more clearly. “How are you this morning? Did you sleep well?”

She nodded. “The Guide came by earlier.” She shook the bag in her arms. “--With gifts.”

Lu’s eyes dropped downward. “Good. He better be back with more than that.”

“This is plenty to get me started. I’m grateful that I’m being provided anything at all.”

Lu stopped moving and pivoted to scowl at her. “First thing’s first, Kikka: don’t ever think for a second that this is a difficulty for us. This place — it’s yours. And we’re fully aware of the technicalities of making it livable for you.”

She held up her hands and Lu gently grabbed them. “Again,” he said, sighing, “—it’s not like you had a choice, here. Don’t feel guilty, please.”

“Didn’t I?” she murmured.

Lu’s expression turned from wounded to stern. “Were you wanting to die?”

“Of course not. But how fair is it for me to be here and for… everyone else to not?”

“I don’t think it’s about fairness, Kikka. And it’s not like my kind has been particularly honest about the crossings. You’re not at fault.”

Kikka stepped back out of his grip and turned to stare at the sun. The burn forced her eyes to dry, which were quickly becoming wet with frustration.

“Kikka?”

“Sorry. I’m not used to being in the position of needing help. Maybe I’m bad at accepting it.”

“I get it,” Lu said gently. Kikka wondered if he really did. “You’ll probably feel better when you have some space of your own. I can’t imagine any of this feels familiar to you — you’ve been moving around all your life, right? Guard work, traveling from town to town, sleeping on the road…”

“I like to be busy. I like to help.”

Lu grinned widely. “Then let’s start there.”

“Come again?”

“I want to build you a house,” he bursts out. His eyes are shining.

Kikka sweeps over the tall pines behind her, the thick grass and the rocky shoreline. In land, there are tender areas of dirt, but this place has long gone undisturbed. Even the lean-to serving as her current sleeping ground looks out of place, a pile of swept together pine needles and soft, green wood. She feels like an intruder among all the foliage.

“You and what army…” she cautions.

Lu waggles his fingers. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

“So you’re making friends again?” She smiled encouragingly.

Lu shook his hand at her some more. “Not exactly. They’re just curious in their own right. It will be a long time before anyone forgives me. And maybe they never will.” He sighed. “It’s unimportant though. They know how I feel.”

“It’s not unimportant. You can’t be the only one with complicated feelings…”

He smiled sheepishly. “Maybe. Definitely the only one eager to rush to break the laws, though.”

Kikka didn’t say anything to that. “So I’ll be meeting other nixi, then…”

“Are you afraid?”

“I want to say I’m not, but…”

“No one will do anything. You’re under our protection.”

Kikka hesitated. “’Our?’”

“Yeah,” Lu said. He started walking past her. “The Guide and myself.”

The first month comes and goes, and Kikka feels a part of herself go with it.

Nothing changes on the island. There’s Lu and there’s the Guide, and then there’s Kikka, wearing the same trail through the grovel every morning, afternoon, and evening.

She maps its edges and its interior, like it’s an undiscovered country and she is the cartographer charged with laying out the land. Part of it is from boredom. Part of it is that she’s curious about the gift she’s been given.

Because she must think of it this way, a second chance, because acknowledging that she’s a prisoner until death makes her jaw ache with grief, and because if she is to live, she must know what she’s working with.

Which is only as much as she’s allowed to make it.

She really was given an entire piece of land to work with, but that didn’t make it easy. The ground is rocky and untrod, the foliage and trees so thick in places that she can’t even crawl through it. The entire island takes a day to walk around. There are shallow beaches on the north shore that go far out into the water, and at that level she can even see the bottom when she walks through it.

But still. The water may not threaten her now, but it’s still a danger she has no desire to engage with.

The hardest part, for now, was carving a space for herself. These are developments she’s quasi-familiar with: there were plenty of days as a guard where she followed merchant caravans from one town to another, passing through fields of rye and oats. There were even plantations with fruit, though picking fallen apples was as good as stealing, so there was little pleasure in it.

Now, she wishes she’d learned to emulate a little more, that she’d been less confident about her chosen path. There is nothing to guard out here, except maybe her already tired heart.

Kikka rolled another boulder out of the shallow clearing, sweat beading into her eyes. This was back-breaking work, the kind that as a young girl usually resulted in laying in the field after, chewing on the ends of grass while the dirt sullied her clothes. She didn’t do that now. No one would approach to scoff at her if she slowed, so she combed through the field until she could walk barefoot, and large rocks didn’t stab into her heels. There’d be more when she tilled the soil, but for now, it was important that the ground was clear.

It was early enough in the year that were she allowed, it’d be possible to try and grow something before the first frost.

She dug her fingers into the ground and felt around in the dirt. This was the least sandy spot she had seen that was viable, but that was the extent of her knowledge. Plants needed sunlight, most of all. They needed water, and they needed soil that would feed them.

Two out of three wasn’t bad, even if the sun still shied south, there were trees that she could cut to better let in the sun. How many days would that take though? All the time for preparation and it may be another month until she was able to do anything at all.

She had just finished rolling the last boulder into line that marked the edges of what she hoped would be the garden, when she turned behind to find them all out of line.

Kikka stilled. Wind blew through the trees high above, and birds sang like they always did, even out here in such an isolated space, but it was quite obvious she wasn’t alone. Lu had told her, she reminded herself, that his kind were horribly curious about her. She just wasn’t expecting anyone so soon, after a month of silence, not even stirrings in the water. Though more times than not, on the nights where Lu felt far away, she slept with one eye open.

She reached back and lined up the first few rocks, shoving them with the side of her foot. If she was patient, the figure would have to give in to temptation and show itself.

The wild rose bushes were so thick that she could barely make out the shape of the nixi, until she stepped out clearly from behind the foliage, eyes fixated on Kikka.

The nixi was small, more like a teenager than a child in years, and it stared blankly at her from behind the old pine she’d eventually have to knock down for sunlight. Kikka froze in suspense, expecting a wayward adult, not a wanderer who may actually cause trouble.

Kikka wiped her hands on her pant legs and raised her hand cautiously. “Hello there,” Kikka called.

The nixi was silent, dark eyes like plum pits in her face, and she stepped back once, twice. “Klkk nikk!” At once she chirped something and disappeared under a mass of pale hair, brushes thrashing as she fled straight through them like a wild, frightened deer. Branches snapped and crunched for a long tense few seconds, then grew distant, until nothing sounded at all.

Kikka stared at the misaligned rocks, drank some water from her oil skin, and contemplated if there were such a thing as fences for curious lake creatures.

“That one is Tanith. She came to us a few years ago and hasn’t grown very large, but has a decent amount of magic. We’re all unsure if she’ll change anymore…” Lu lay flat on his back on the beach, skin and hair still dark with water.

_They have me scrubbing plankton off the elders' backs — they get so tired of shifting anymore, someone has to keep them decent! I hate it!_

Kikka dug her toes into the sand. Warm breezes had been blowing across the black water for several weeks now, and the bird call had started growing more aggressive, and with it, the nixi were moved by the changes happening out of the water, and so they were getting braver, crawling ashore to investigate. Kikka was starting to believe it had less to do with her arrival, and a lot more to do with how Lu intended to spend his time with her. Of which, that time was becoming more plentiful, and his company kept her distracted from her own spiraling thoughts.

Further away, the nixi in question turned her accusing glare on Lu, who seemed to feel it with indifference, a sudden smile crawling across his lips. “She’s a prickly one. Cute though,” he offered. “This form, at least. Oh Kikka, I have stories to tell you — you know, looking like a human isn’t the only shape we can imitate. We make fantastic fish.”

Kikka hid her smile in her collar. She was still unsure how to react to the interference.

“I’m still unsure how you look unchanged. The nixi, I mean. The way you look when you walk the bridges…”

Lu sighed. “Staged. And uncomfortable to maintain, from what I’ve heard. You imitate the image of a human and warp it to look terrifying — it’s gruesome turning yourself into something unnatural. I tried, once. I couldn’t do it. I could never do it…”

“It really is all a performance,” Kikka murmured. She tugged at stray pieces of grass from the sand by her feet.

“Yeah. A cheap play that could have been avoided if someone had better problem solving skills…”

“His story with Garvyn is unfortunate.”

“Don’t hold back, Kikka. He knows exactly how I feel. The Guide’s exactly the same as the counterpart he killed all those years ago… and now we all have to deal with what he started. It’s appalling. I can’t believe it’s been supported for so long.”

Kikka watched Tanith slip back into the water. Her pale head swiveled to watch them one more time, than she disappeared, and resurfaced further out at the large standing rocks where another lone nixi lay sprawled, in the shape of a young woman. As soon as Tanith had made her presence known, Kikka got the privilege of glimpsing several in a day. And who knew what tomorrow would bring?

“Do others share your frustrations?”

Lu craned his head back in the dirt to look at her. “Do you think things would have turned out like this if there were?”

She stiffened. “You tell me.”

“A few, but for reasons different than mine. I don’t like killing humans. I don’t see the point of it. The others… some of them call for a straight up war. They want to push us into even further conflict.”

“And who tells them no?”

Lu closed his eyes. “The council. The matriarch. And, well, the Guide. Despite these near ritualistic killings, he’d prefer pulling out entirely if he believed the humans wouldn’t try to cross Sinnlos again…”

“But he doesn’t.”

“No. And I mean, I get it. Life is hard for humans. Being able to cross bodies of water quickly would make everything easier. But Sinnlos isn’t feasible. And it’s our home. Humans can travel around and live where ever they can build and grow food. But us? We can’t leave.”

“Have you tried?”

“Someone did, once, a long time ago. They left Sinnlos for about two weeks. Upon their return, they could no longer change shape, and Sinnlos refused to heal his body. He passed.”

“You sound like hostages.”

Lu smiled wryly. “It’s just the hand we were dealt. If everyone was as understanding and thoughtful as you though, I have no doubt we could learn to coexist. That would be nice. I’d like not worrying about it.”

Kikka reached out and stroked his hair and he grinned cheekily at her. “Kikka. You must have had friends or family you were close with? Not to bring up unhappy memories, but… do you miss them?”

“I do.”

Lu wilted. “Sorry. I don’t know why I brought it up. It was unkind.”

“It’s alright. I make you talk all the time.”

“Yeah, but…”

“There were people I saw more than most, but those were my colleagues.” Kikka looked out at the water. “Bemelle and I worked together for several years, but only grew to be good friends over the last few months. It happened that our previous partners were reassigned to a different region, and so we picked up the slack.”

“What about family — parents? Siblings? Cousins? Distant relations?”

“My mother passed when I was seven. My father was also a guard, and one day he just never returned home from his post. Mother thought he’d ran off with someone younger. We never heard from him, but his work pension was sent to us, so for several years we managed to live comfortably. But she grew sick one year at work and passed. After that, I lived in an orphanage until I was fifteen. And then I joined the military reserves. Most of the action I saw was chasing thieves for stealing bread. And then it wasn’t, and my experiences saw to it that I got good with my sword.”

“Were you lonely?”

Kikka smiled at him. “Probably. I don’t remember it very well now. Once I started working that became my focus.”

“Were you good at it?”

“No,” she said simply. “I was a surly child, and disobedient. I became a guard because there were no other options for me, and for the first few years I performed horribly. People died. It shook me. I was stationed far away, after that.”

“WHAT.” Lu sat up harshly. “Kikka, you’re one of the most compassionate people I know…”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m still frustrated by this whole situation. I felt betrayed by the world as a child when I lost my parents and then my home. Am I really that empathetic now? Maybe I’m just trying to make up for things…”

“Well, expecting that would be unreasonable… at the very least Kikka, you listen, and not many would do that knowing what you know…”

Kikka shook her head.

Lu grew sullen, then reached out and picked up her hand to squeeze it. “None of us are perfect,” he said morosely.

“No,” she said carefully, standing up to shake off the dirt. Suddenly, she was exhausted. “And we don’t necessarily get any better with time, we just get worse.”

For a while after, she did allow herself to grow distant. The Guide continued to appear on the island every morning, but she noticed him less and less. Lu carried wood and made a ruckus out below the cliffs, but Kikka left him to his affairs. The weather had been good, and her current sleeping spot was satisfactory, if flimsy. But there were other things to be wrestling with: state of mind.

It was the same routine for over a month: get up, walk around, do her practice, eat, walk around some more, wrestle with the land.

And she was feeling defeated by the small sense of purpose she had as the days blurred together.

It seemed unfair that she should benefit from a comfortable life in this place, regardless of everyone’s wishes who had given her this chance to live — she wondered if she’d made the decision she had out of fear, because helping anyone right now was out of the question.

And making herself unavailable for conversation was the self-fulfilling prophecy she perpetuated.

She just needed to give herself time, she thought. But the feelings of frustration continued to build, and helplessness at its heels.

She sat on the rock beach on the west shore, after tromping through the brush for a good hour to get there with the hope of being alone. She shouldn’t have been surprised when a shadow appeared over her shoulder.

“Self-flagellating, still?”

The Guide, uncharacteristically, had sought her out. Kikka registered his words, then scowled at him, shifting around on the ground to glare up at him. His green cloak and face held her gaze and absolved her of any rage. He was as calm as a still pond.

“…You did choose to stay here,” he said coolly. “I didn’t think it was because you planned to embrace the life of a hermit.”

“Yes, I did.” Kikka turned back to stare out at the shore, but she wasn’t taking it in. Birds had been bouncing around in the wet sand, combing through rocks and shells, and now they were riding the breeze to shores other than hers.

“Having regrets?”

“No. But I also chose to reason with you and it’s hard to go anywhere when you limit your visits to the crack of dawn.”

“I wasn’t aware we were negotiating.”

Kikka shrugged and said no more. The Guide came around the eroded grass and stood in the basin by her feet, poking around the sand and the shells with the end of his staff.

“I already searched them. I think the birds beat us today.”

The Guide said nothing and Kikka didn’t either. Finally, his patience wore thin and he came to stand beside her.

“Did you think you’d lure me over by making yourself unavailable?”

“No,” she said, then considered. “But it was very effective, wasn’t it?”

He ignored her taunt. “Lu says you’re angry with him. He’s sulking more than usual. What did he do?”

Kikka withdrew. “Nothing at all. He’s been nothing but thoughtful.”

The Guide waited for more, than crouched down to her level. It was a startling tenderness and feeling of deja vu, the likeliness of which she’d only experienced when he’d relit her lantern while she sat dripping water on the bridges, half-dead from the shock of falling into Sinnlos and surviving.

“I know Lu can be insensitive, but know he’d come forth immediately with an apology if he’d believed he’d harmed you. You should make peace with him, before he does something stupid.”

Despite herself, Kikka smiled. “You know he’s resentful of your involvement in any of his affairs,” she said. “Are you speaking for him or meddling?”

“Neither. You’re the one who’s been distant.”

“Let’s say I’m as fine as I can be, all things considered.”

He went quiet.

“You and Lu — you’re in conflict with each other all the time. Why?”

“It’s not your business,” he said politely. His eyes were thin and narrow, assessing. Kikka stayed calm, though he was easy to rile, she needn’t make anything more strained.

“Lu’s told me a little. I thought I would ask you before I made assumptions.”

The Guide sighed. “I frequently misunderstand him. I am used to a single way of doing things, and Lu constantly wishes to challenge that.”

“It’s more than that, though. Neither of you want to disappoint each other, it seems.”

“I have a responsibility to my people, and Lu has a responsibility to those that came before. It’s nothing more complex than that.”

“Whatever your frustrations, Lu is truly kind, and a friend I did not expect to find.”

For the first time, the Guide’s smile was obvious. “Yes, he cares a great deal. It would be good if he could learn to treat himself that way as well. It seems with you, he may grow and learn more still…” He turned away again. “In regards to what you’re feeling now…”

“It will eventually dull.”

He stayed quiet. “I don’t believe you have it in you for that level of forgiveness.”

“I don’t. But I have to live. I chose to be here. So that’s how it is.”

Kikka tried not to watch his face — it had turned to stone again, and whatever thoughts he had allowed her to read suddenly vanished and he was left a blank page.

“Talk to Lu,” he said again, turning away. “But don’t reject him for his actions. He may be guilty, but it was I who made things turn out like this.”

“Maybe you should talk to him too,” she said softly.

The Guide said nothing. There was nothing left to say.

When she can’t sleep, Kikka forces her body to get up.

She went down to the lake for lack of any better ideas and walked around. The fog had rolled in, but it hovered a far distance from shore, like the island was free from its white mists or had something to hide from her.

For a while she listened to crickets sing, an owl calling quietly through the darkness, and the sound of the wind rustling through the grass.

Eventually, the calm broke, not unlike her nightmares which feature plenty of almosts, suddenly the water is carrying itself out of the lake.

Even squinting through the darkness, it takes several long heartbeats before she realizes it’s actually a figure.

A nixi — cloaked entirely in darkness, shrouded in obscurity, as dark as the bottom of a well or a deep hole.

Kikka forced herself not to move away from the sight.

“Hello,” she called, and barely recognized her own voice, still strained with sleep.

Slowly, so slowly, the face began to change right before her.

At first, it looked like her. Then it blurred and changed again, shoulders growing broader, arms heavy and long, with height that made her feel like she needed to take a step back. And so she did.

Shoulder-length hair the color of grass, gentle eyes, an easy, cheeky smile, many years familiar to her every day and then some —

“Bemelle?”

The nixi stood on the sand before her like a proud stallion.

Kikka dropped the lamp. Surely the nixi were aware — to know his face, they would have —

“Are you serious,” Kikka muttered. “If you dislike me so much, then have it out with me. But don’t disrespect the dead.”

Bemelle’s face turned to surprise, and it warped into another, faster this time, features contorting, like looking through water in a piece of glass. But Kikka averted her gaze and glared at the shore, imagining an audience of these fisher boys laughing just under its surface, and her indifference and frustration grew worse.

She strode out of the water and parallel along the shore, weaving through gray rocks and scratchy grasses, and still the chill chased her all the way up the rocky shore. She couldn’t ever get far enough away from Sinnlos and its curses, its laughter seemed to goad her, reminding her always that she was destined to run in circles now, and for many of those minutes she was choked with resentment so thick and sudden that it consumed her. She found a hollow area to crouch and cry, furious that she hadn’t died with Margret and Bemelle that night. The brush tickled her neck and hair, a spider’s loose thread caught on her face, and she knelt firmly in the dirt to let her knees grow wet. The cold was grounding and her misery warm.

Like she could look at Lu without thinking of Margret. It was just that time moved and one moved with it, and shock faded, and since she was alive she had to think of other things. But no one spoke of Bemelle, his quiet disappearance off the bridge in a scene of brimstone and fire, or the way her own smiles and laughter were now not colored by his.

But this was a burning injustice that which she could not shake, or forget: that she could both learn to love what had been given to her and to resent the reasons for it.

And so, though the nixi thought they could come up onto the island with human faces and maybe she would love them more for it, they had to try with the approach.

And Kikka allowed herself to be hurt by their mistakes for the awful memories they brought up.

Lu came to find Kikka later. She made a fire in between large rocks, where the cold stones chilled her back and the fire warmed her front. She held her fingers out toward the coals and watched the fire lick through dead wild rose bushes and rowan branches. She was sulking and she knew it — but what time there had been for grief was triumphed by other things, and suddenly one reminder on a night where her mind was already exhausted would result in a breaking point. She wasn’t unfamiliar with loss, but still. One had to ride it out like bad medicine.

He came and sat wordlessly beside her, tense and drawn, but he leaned into her shoulder to draw her closer, and Kikka leaned against him. She thought of hiding in her mother’s skirts when she was four or five, drawn to the warmth and familiarity, closing her eyes and giving into safety. On long nights Bemelle sidled close like this; still respectable, just the warm comfort of another body close by.

“Just… come clean with me,” Lu said finally. “You can tell me to bugger off. You haven’t said, and you probably won’t, but if I were in your shoes… I think I’d go crazy if someone just lopped my companion off into a killer lake. I’d probably jump after. I don’t know if I’d have the tenacity to endure.”

“You have,” Kikka said dryly.

“Right. Technically, yes, but I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about Margret. The girl I killed. You didn’t follow, Kikka. There’s craziness in that too, you know?”

Kikka withdrew. “Yes,” she said. Her throat closed. “Because I can still help.”

“You always want to help. But you know, I told myself I’d spend the rest of my life trying to measure up for every human that’s been unfairly lost to Sinnlos, that she’d be the last. But you know the Guide’s out leading people to their deaths right now. And we’re still here, same as ever.”

She said nothing, and could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t choke her.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Dour so furious. And lost. He really believed killing you would save me, and when I came back the second time to finish what he started… I think he realized how badly I wanted you to live. He was going to see you across to the other side.”

Kikka stayed quiet. Lu looked nervously at her. “I’m saying that… had I accepted that my life was forfeit, you and Margret may both have made it the other side.”

“No,” Kikka said. “That wouldn’t have made him happy.” Her throat closed. “Oh Lu, I showed you kindness because that’s how I am, and I really do believe that there is value in everyone in this world… but their deaths for mine will never have been worth it.

“No,” Lu said softly. “For the both of us. I was going to die that night. And I made a choice not to, just as you made a choice to live. Ultimatum or not, I decided… that I wanted to continue on despite the evil in it. But I don’t want the scheme to continue. It’s horrid. I’ve taken no pleasure in killing humans… and I realize that, among my kind, we are divided on this.”

Kikka exhaled and slouched further into the rock. “I’ve been wondering… how you picked the figure that you did. Was it someone you killed? Or someone else?”

Lu was eerily calm, and his thoughtful silence weighed heavily. “Our kind has been imitating humans far longer than our dear Guide, it’s the most convenient shape for us to take, but he did set a new pattern.”

“Who was he?” she asked. “Do you think about that? Do you wonder?”

“I’ll admit, I don’t really want to give you anything more to be upset about. Do you want to hold onto these questions until morning? Think over whether you think the answers matter?”

“Red hair was not something I saw often,” Kikka remarked. His fingers knotted around his knees and Kikka stroked the knuckles, once.

Lu’s head bowed. “I know. Interesting, isn’t it? I wanted to be friends with him so badly. He wasn’t afraid of the water, and he was often alone… other humans said he grew up wrong. But I thought he was kind, insofar, at least, his lack of concern was generous. One night, he came flying from the land and out onto the bridges. Dogs were chasing him. I didn’t know what he had done, but it was a shock to see him flee. From under the surface of the water, I left my patrol and followed him. I thought I would make sure he returned safely. But he suddenly just laid down and died on the bridge. He had a stab wound. Guards had caught him trying to raid a store house. I guess he was starving.”

Kikka closed her eyes. “Not an uncommon thing, out here.”

“I suppose not. But I couldn’t forget his face, or his uncanniness. But no — I didn’t kill him so I could look like this. He was just the first I got a real good look at.”

“So it’s a practice then… changing shape…”

“Like building a house, or changing clothes,” Lu teased. “But the Guide set the precedent for looking like the deceased. We all know how well that worked for him. Looks totally like Garvyn, the fool.”

Kikka sagged against his shoulder. “I owe someone an apology, maybe. I assumed… ah, but I’m still angry. Could you…?”

“Already did. He’s sorry, by the way. Null is his name. He’s not good with changing form, yet. And some of us don’t know how to contextualize anything…”

“It’s fine,” Kikka said. “He just surprised me, was all. After the consideration I’ve been shown, I shouldn’t have assumed that the appearance was deliberate…”

Lu stayed quiet, not even his jaw moving when he swallowed and squeezed her shoulder silently. She looked sideways at the line of his cheek, the soft slope of his body against hers. Boyish and soft to hide the iron underneath. Her grief felt almost insignificant in the face of his guilt: quietly executing orders that made him simmer with disbelief and betrayal, enough to risk himself just for her, who had dragged him away from certain death and into something; she thought now, maybe worse.

The first house, though Kikka is loathe to admit it, is shabby and poorly constructed. It’s made of fallen timber, water leaks through the roof and blows in through the sides with nippy air, and it doesn’t hold heat from the fire. It escapes out through the chimney, and the draft rolls through so wickedly that even under a pile of blankets it feels impossible to stay warm.

But Lu is ecstatic, so pleased with his efforts and his care, though the Guide follows after the tour more distantly, he does not look pleased, or curious, or any manner of impressed; he looks, Kikka realized, uncertain.

And Kikka can understand what those looks had meant. He’d found it unsuitable, and hadn’t hesitated to say so.

“Let Kikka be the judge,” Lu said, and looped his arms around himself protectively.

The Guide looked at her, but neither of them said anything, so preoccupied Kikka was with the relief and awe that someone had gone to such lengths for her, she knew she was probably glowing too.

She lost that cheekiness after the first week. The weather turned shockingly cold and she woke up congested, a cough in her throat.

It hung around like a shroud, and headaches came and went. It didn’t keep her from walking the eastern shore line every morning, stretching her limbs while hoping to catch a glimpse of the Guide before he departed, like chasing the edge of a sudden and heavy storm. Fog rose over the lake every morning, the water suddenly warmer than the air, and soon enough Kikka was watching her breath mist in front of her. Autumn was not far off.

She held off the sickness for nearly a month before one morning, she’d slept in until the afternoon.

The knock at the door is what wakes her, and when she finally manages to heave her eyes open Lu is hovering anxiously.

“Kikka, are you alright? No one had seen you this morning and I got nervous.”

“Yeah,” she croaks, which is all the answer they both need.

Lu sat back on his heels. “This is terrible. I don’t know what to do for sick humans. You probably want to eat something warm, right? Or do you want to sleep more?”

Kikka shook her head. “I’m not very hungry,” she said. “Just tired.”

“What about hot water? Something for your throat?”

“Kind of nauseas, actually,” she admitted.

“No food then,” he agreed. Lu sat in the hut, huddled up on the floor with her, talking about nothing for hours until she grew exhausted from his rambling and fell asleep, then woke and he’d talk some more. Eventually he was absent and she stopped following who came or went in the house while she wasted away.

When she woke up next, she was soaked through from sweat, and cold and hot all over.

She rolled over to come face to face with the Guide, who was wetting strips of cloth in a basin.

Kikka cleared her throat, then held perfectly still when he turned his eyes on her.

He looked tired. They widened fractionally when he realized she was looking back.

“Have you decided to return to the land of the living?”

She wiped the crust from her eye lashes so she could better see, then all at once felt the disjointed haze that comes from being laid up in bed for days at a time, the smell of sleep and skin clinging so strongly she felt embarrassed he was there at all. Kikka folded the fabric under her head into a makeshift pillow and scrubbed her face some more.

“Wasn’t aware I could go anywhere else.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Ill, but better. Like I was kicked by a horse.”

“Yes, I doubt the floor is particularly comfortable.”

She dragged her tongue over her teeth. “Sorry. But can I — could I have some water?”

He picked up a half filled glass on the table, air bubbles pocketing the sides, and knelt by her bedside awkwardly. “You’ll have to sit up.”

“I know. Mustering the strength.”

The Guide waited, expression unreadable. Kikka wondered why he was here, and not Lu, and how long she’d been sleeping, who’d kept the fire hot, and her blankets on her when she knew she’d kicked them off in her feverish hazes. The answer was obvious. It was information she didn’t know what to do with.

“Thank you,” she said instead, and she took large swallows until her mouth felt cleaner, she could breathe more easily, and the fog in her head cleared, so smothered by the water.

A cool palm touched her forehead. “You still seem too warm. Will you go back to sleep?”

“In a bit,” Kikka replied. “I don’t even know what day it is.” She tried not to look at him. “Where’s Lu?”

“Out.” Kikka waited. “He came looking for me when your sickness grew worse. I came here. He was fussing, so I sent him out.”

“I see.” She stroked the fabric of her blanket, then stiffened, looking more closely. A green cloak, with soft, thick cuffs around the bottom of the sleeves. “Oh. This is yours.”

“Yes,” the Guide said. Now he looked bemused. “We didn’t have enough blankets. I didn’t realize how thin the fabric was we had provided, and you were shivering. I apologize for not realizing sooner. You grew sick out of our carelessness.” It struck her as a surprise that he was actually concerned. In no small part because of Lu’s devotion on her behalf, and yet, the Guide was the one in the room with her.

Kikka spun the cup in her hands. “It was sufficient, with the fire.”

He narrowed his eyes. “No. I’ve been in here for nearly three days. The draft is enormous. This is a pig’s pen at best.”

Kikka tried to glare, then coughed instead. “Lu worked very hard,” she said. “There’s no need to criticize.” The Guide frowned at her.

“It’s the truth. Lu works hard at many things and succeeds at few.”

“Do you say that to his face?”

“Only when he refuses to listen.”

“He hates how over bearing you are.”

“I’m used to being disliked.”

Kikka went quiet. She tried to imagine how the two came to be as estranged as they were, with the quiet support the Guide offered regardless of Lu’s frustrations, and the closest Kikka could assume was that her arrival was not far off from the course Lu had been veering toward all his life. And yet, Lu still turned toward him when he needed someone; Kikka hadn’t seen any other nixi that came to his aide like the Guide.

Or hers.

“You’ve known each other a long time,” Kikka observed.

“Yes. What is it that you’re wanting to say?”

Her fingers stilled on the ceramic. There was already a chip along the handle, and her nail found it automatically. She cleared her throat. “Nothing. It just seems that you’re always looking out for him, despite your frustrations. I’m glad.”

The Guide’s face tightened and he turned away to the basin, wringing water out of the cloth in his hands. “I have a responsibility to. Lu came to us a long time ago, and he never settled right. I blame the disturbance upon the lake’s surface that interfered with his creation. He came into this world during Garvyn’s time — during the pollution, and was not as unsettled by it as the rest of us.”

Kikka rarely heard him say so much. “He was curious, wasn’t he.”

“He always his.” He pivoted on his knees and Kikka took the compress gratefully. “Nixi are born through concentrated magic,” he explained. “And during Lu’s time, Sinnlos was under siege. The shores were full of garbage from the camps, and their foray onto the bridges brought it even further. I noticed the effects right away, how lethargic I began to feel, and the change in the rest of us. Sinnlos is very much like a well. Any disturbance, any leak, any pollution, compromises it.”

“I heard rumors about it, as a child,” Kikka murmured. “Garvyn’s team of scientists and cartographers spanned ‘a mile along the western shore, all along the yellow grasses of the moor.’”

“It was not that long. The bards like to exaggerate.”

Kikka smiled. “I also heard much about how Garvyn’s son took up the reins by himself.”

The Guide looked down at his hands. “’Bastard’ was not so far off,” he murmured. “Garvyn was wholly uninterested in what I had to say. I was not great at speaking with humans then… I did not have the curiosity that they did, to see what lies on the other side of things. He laughed at me when I tried to make my case. Looking back, I’m hardly surprised — expanding frontiers at whatever cost is what humans do. Sinnlos was going to be whatever he thought it was, and nothing else.”

“Are you curious now? About the other side.”

He said nothing for a moment, frowning at her. “Time will tell.”

Kikka hummed, then ducked her head to cough at a tickle.

He stuck his hand out and took the cup from Kikka’s hands. Gratefully, she sunk back into the blankets, and the palette creaked as she rearranged her legs into cooler spaces. Changing clothes would be good, but the idea of moving made her head spin.

“Lu is far more amiable than me. Others have been wanting to take a page out of his book for a long time. I don’t know if I can ever allow myself that.”

Kikka said nothing, but held his eyes. Wordlessly, she gestured at herself and the room.

“…Many nixi made the decision for you to stay, I merely voiced it.”

“Thank you,” she said simply.

He breathed a sigh, then rose to his feet, brushing dirt off his knees. “Your state is partially our doing, no need to act like we’re perfect givers. I’ll see about better clothing for you in the meanwhile.”

She watched him prattle about the small room, coaxing the fire back into a roar, tucking parts of the loose planking back into the wall, throwing old water outside and returning with a fresh bucket from the well. He did all of these things like he’d been doing them all his life. He didn’t look any different than human, the perfect imitation of a man, with not a trace of his true identity at all. But maybe she was the one expecting that someone who could change shapes like she changed clothes had any wild identity crises underneath it all.

At last, he came back to her side and pulled a vial from the pouch on the table. The cork made a soft pop upon release and the medicinal scent hit her like a wave. He bent down to her level and she sat up again, tossed awake.

“That’s familiar.”

He placed it in her hand without touching her. “You’ll drink that,” he said breezily. “It will help you sleep.” She held it under her nose, even as her nose tried to run.

The Guide made a strangled noise. “Don’t sniff it, just drink it. It’s from town. I’m not going to poison you after this amount of time.”

“You could be feeling recalcitrant,” Kikka mumbled. She drank it with minimal fuss and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand after. Her senses were dull but she shuddered anyway. The bitter taste coated her whole mouth.

The Guide reached over and plucked the vial out of her hand. “Get better,” he said simply, without looking at her. “Go back to sleep.”

Kikka blinked owlishly at him. His cloak was still over her blankets and he looked smaller and thinner without it. His shadow stretched across the wall. She still didn’t know if it was day or night outside. “Will you stay?”

He didn’t turn. “Are you asking?”

“Are you wanting permission? You can have it.”

Kikka turned over on her other side. Very quietly, his feet moved around the room, and she dozed to the sounds of a house with other people in it. After all this time it felt like she was somewhere else, maybe not on an island at all.

When Kikka woke again, she was alone only momentarily. She stretched out beneath the blankets and brushed against the coldness of the floor.

The room wasn’t empty. The Guide was reading quietly at the table, feet kicked up on the chair opposite him, casual and quiet as could be.

Opposite him, Lu dozed with a coat draped over him.

She shifted under the blankets and both men roused at the sound.

“Kikka, finally, you slept so much —”

The Guide nodded at her before politely closing his book. “Kikka.”

“Hi,” she managed.

Lu scrambled out of his chair to settle on the floor with her, a glass of water already in his hands. “Hey, you have some color in your face finally. How do you feel?”

“Give me a minute…”

Suddenly, the door was thrust open, and Tanith streaked inside like a strong breeze. Null and Nan piled in behind her, one after the other, and Kikka startled out of bed, suddenly buried under a mix of dirt, plant detritus, and sandy roots.

“What…” she began.

The Guide plucked the plant out of her lap, turning it over. “Yarrow - you found it this late in the season?”

“The Point,” Tanith said. She pivoted and gestured toward the direction of the bluffs, the beautiful limestone cliffs and their sparse vegetation. “Late.”

He furrowed his brow disbelievingly.

“I can still use it,” Kikka murmured. She extended her hands and curled her fingers. “I’ll just dry it.”

“I’ll do it,” Lu protested, and swiped the plant.

Tanith dropped onto the blankets with Kikka and stroked her fingers over the fabric. Wool, for insulation and breathing on the outside, cheap linen on the inside that felt good against her skin.

Kikka sunk back into the blankets. “That was thoughtful,” Kikka said. “I am getting better though.”

Tanith frowned. “Water-touched,” she said.

Silence descended on the room, but the tension broke just as quick when Tanith slipped under the covers next to Kikka, delighting in the pockets of warm air. Her dirty feet scraped Kikka’s calves and without thinking she bundled the squirming nixi into her arms.

“I didn’t invite you inside,” Kikka warned. “Now you’re trapped here, as my extra insulator.” Tanith flicked a plant leaf off the bed.

“That’s fine,” she sighed.

Null and Nan stood in the doorway observing stiffly, and Lu stood by the kitchen counter, brushing dirt into a pan.

Kikka looked at them, feeling particularly overwhelmed and crowded. She pulled the blankets tighter around her shoulders again, the breeze suddenly a firm reminder that summer was disappearing quickly.

And then the Guide rumbled, “Everyone out,” and the Nixi dispersed like scolded children.

For the first few weeks after laying in bed like a crushed pansy, Kikka feels like she’s barely tethered to the world of the living. And for the months that follow, there is a cold discontent that settles over her like a blanket, like the fog on the lake, like the great hand of Sinnlos has come down to grip her, and Kikka learns to live with it.

Partially, it feels like the fog has found its way inside; but she hears from Lu later, a quiet rumble as he sits up late talking to her again and again and again — the Matriarch wished you well, he says. The Guide asked her to. She’s very powerful, you know. Even we don’t understand her magic.

Kikka wonders at what cost, and then never thinks about it again.

The house is taken apart and expanded greatly. Kikka sleeps in her old lean-to with the fire close by, and marvels at the stars once more.

There’s a garden, and there’s a boot room, and the wood is made from green lumber, from the pretty saplings on the far side of the island, a place none of them have to look at. It bends obediently in their hands like threads of fabric. When it cures, it will last for many years.

She helps Lu thatch the roof. Her hands are splintered and calloused, but the craftsmanship is far superior to the last build. The island grasses are thick along the shore, just above the sand, where they grow in between dark rocks and drink up puddled water. Lu is cheerful while he works. A whole slew of Nixi, in various states of glamour, watch his hands closely. Some, the ones with clear human faces, work more quickly.

It’s Null and Nan, dragging long slender branches from a denser part of the woods, that make Kikka feel infinitely too small for her boots.

“How do you know all this?”

“Observation,” Lu says. “Kidding. Partially. You won’t believe me.”

He glances both ways, then leans in to leer a little. “The Guide, despite his extreme contempt for humans, is an avid reader. I asked him to do some research. He’s a curious guy, but he’s not exactly in a position where he can show off that knowledge, you know?”

“Right,” Kikka says. “That makes sense.”

“It doesn’t, you don’t have to lie. Anyway: he said if he didn’t research you’d die within the year. And that’s terrifying to think about! You’re a guest,” Lu admonishes, “not a pet. So he met with some merchants to inquire about materials… and then he got his hands on some drafts from a contractor. And then was an embarrassing and rude guest at a human’s or two. So he says.”

Kikka frowned. “Where does he keep this stuff?”

“We have a couple of very nice winterized boxes. But it’s more realistic for the Guide to keep his belongings at the tavern where he stays. He may not be the most personable, but he doesn’t struggle with getting his way. People oblige him all the time. You should ask him, he really likes dramas and stories. Obviously money isn’t that important and the work isn’t lucrative, but.” Lu shrugged. “Even he has interests. But it would have been better if he could have been a simpleton like me and fallen in love with sea shells.”

“Maybe you can start him a rock collection,” Kikka deadpanned. Lu tossed a pine needle at her and laughed.

The house, while better, is still struggling. The Guide walks around it that night, frowning at this and that, then looks upset. He looks at Kikka. She looks at him.

“No one’s gone to such effort for me before,” she says. “Thank you both.” If her voice is gruff, none of them comment on it.

When it comes time to reevaluate their losses, the Guide sits down with her. “You need a dwelling that’s functional,” he says. “If you intend to be helpful, do as you’ve really said, I can bother to settle the disadvantages.”

“I can too,” she offers, not thinking. What score is there for her to settle except continuously imposing?

“No,” he says politely. “I think not.”

“You have a home too,” she hedges, “—that you want to protect and make perfect. I can help.”

“Your idea of a home and mine are incompatible,” he says stiffly. “Mine is a place I was born from and yours is an object. You don’t call a womb your home. There is nothing to see.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she says. “You don’t tell me anything. And Lu doesn’t want to talk about it.”

The Guide stares at her.

“It doesn’t seem right that I should know nothing about you, or how to treat you, or respond to you, or any manner of things. I don’t even know what you look like without that face. Is this how you see yourself? Looking like Garvyn’s son?”

“No, I don’t,” he said stiffly.

“I’ve never even see you in the water,” Kikka pushed, “don’t like to get your hems wet, maybe?”

He heaved a sigh and pushed her drink across the table to her.

“Alright, ask. You want a conversation? Let’s have one.”

“Good,” she says, “I can’t help if you don’t let me.”

He doesn’t say anything at all. Then: “You must be happy here to feel so sure,” he says. “Because I can hardly keep you out of anything anymore.”

The wind didn’t blow through the walls now, and the rooms were portioned off into three areas, enough to give her a sense of privacy in the presence of company and enough to have a shared common room. Which Kikka didn’t take full advantage of but enjoyed enough.

Tanith ventured in with Lu in the morning, watching Kikka with interest, like she may grow a second head. Kikka tried not to mind it; eventually she got used to the stares from others as well and was sure she did plenty of it herself. But now, it started to feel like strangers were feeling her out with the hope of pulling the chair out from under her; suddenly, she was the one looking over her shoulder for the hint of danger. But that never came, either.

“Sooooo…” Lu started. Tanith clambered into the chair beside him. “I think we should construct furniture next. Maybe a bookcase. Some sturdier chairs.”

Kikka touched the back of his chair defensively. “It holds fine,” she said, and Lu grinned impishly. He rattled the legs on it.

“Yeah, but I could make way nicer ones now.”

“I know, but I’m pretty fond of these.” She grinned at him. “I do have an idea for what should come next. Nothing in here, for now.”

“Yeah?”

“The garden. It’s too late for crops but we could prep it for next year.”

Lu’s smile was wobbly. He rubbed the back of his neck and sunk backwards. “Growing plants, huh. The sun isn’t very strong.”

“No,” Kikka replied, “but it’s doable.”

Tanith, very curiously, left tooth marks on the table. Lu scolded and scooted her away.

In the end, it’s late morning by the time they’ve made a plan for tackling the yard Kikka’s wrestled with since day one. It taunts her by being the sunniest, most open patch of ground, just sloping slightly, just enough to give it the best angle for holding heat — but the most damnable in terms of being the rockiest.

Lu crouched down in the weeds, wrapping his fingers in the strands. While Kikka had pulled constantly to pull plants by the roots, her long sickness had given them ample time to grow thick and bushy again in her absence. “What will you do if the plants don’t grow?”

Kikka walked around him, sinking a further distance away. “I’ll have to rely on handouts. It would be difficult and frustrating for everyone, I think.”

“If the Guide refused you anything, I’d get it.”

“I know, Lu. But I don’t like putting anyone in position of caretaker.”

“I get it. This is a really hard life for humans, huh… constantly digging in the ground, building things, collecting things…”

Kikka shrugged. “Necessities are not something you think about not having, until you don’t or can’t access them. Then it’s damning.”

“Alright, then we’ll make this as easy as possible: what grows well in poor weather? What will last a long time once picked?”

“Root vegetables,” announced the Guide. Kikka about jumped out of her skin.

He appeared behind their shoulders and calmly rolled a boulder away with the side of his boot. Tanith threw her arms around his legs in delight. “Meeting done!” she cried. And rapidly began to speak to the Guide in their native tongue. His voice was subdued and quiet by comparison.

Kikka and Lu both rose. Her knees creaked in protest. “Meeting?” she asked. Lu shook his head lightly and didn’t look a her.

The Guide frowned at Lu, unimpressed by his response, and plowed on: “Some Nixi were concerned that your needs would become a liability for us.”

“Cowards,” Lu snapped. “Everyone’s just afraid to break tradition.” Kikka touched the back of his arm and he quieted, looking chastised. His frustration on her behalf was not new, but it made Kikka anxious, as it showed her clearly how unlike the other nixi he was.

The Guide closed his eyes. “So there was a compromise.”

Kikka stayed quiet.

“Two of us will go, three times a month. Enough not to draw suspicion, enough to keep you fed. The responsibility falls to myself, Null, and Lu.”

Lu is still vaguely angry, and Kikka can’t pin what’s made his hackles rise, except the Guide’s carefully neutral tone, and there’s animosity between them that she can’t tell if she caused or is simply more of the same.

“That’s generous and I appreciate anything at all,” Kikka managed. “Thank you. I’m sorry for the extra work.”

Lu began to squirm and refused to look at the Guide. He resumed his work soundlessly, dropping down to his knees in the dirt and yanking at the grass without thought for the roots. Kikka nudged him gently with her shoe.

The Guide took in the ground and the clear line of the perimeter Kikka had made. “You’re planning for the long term.”

“Should I not be?”

He shook his head, then squeezed Tanith’s shoulder before releasing her. “No, it’s wise. But you can understand that it’s also a shock seeing this land so changed in such a short amount of time…”

“It’s just me,” Kikka said quietly. And a lot of other hands. “It looks rough now, but the ground will grow out again in the spring.”

His eyes didn’t focus on anything when he turned toward her, strange and distant. “Maybe it’s good then. Time will tell.”

Kikka startled, then let an easy smile cross her face. He so rarely gave her the win. “You’ll be breathing a sigh of relief when you’re not packing your weight in parsnips across the bridges to me.”

“I won’t argue with that one. Enjoy the weather,” he said, and parted as quietly as he came.

Next to her, Lu stuck out his tongue at the Guide’s retreating back. “You’re always good,” he said, after.

“You are too,” she retorted. Lu tossed a particularly wet dirt clump her way and it broke along her knee. “I take it back,” she said.

Lu sighed and sobered. “The Guide didn’t tell you all of it. The meeting was much more complicated than a simple conversation about shopping.”

“I wondered.” Kikka sat back on her haunches. “How so?”

“Let’s just say you’re presence has sparked debate about our interactions with other humans. Some patrols have been neglecting their borders, and fear of a coup started circulating several days ago.”

“A coup? But what’s the division?”

Lu sighed. “Some are saying we should just let the humans cross, without interfering. That Sinnlos will do the rest. But you know,” and Lu looked around, before his eyes rested on Tanith and then her, “that didn’t happen with Garvyn. Sinnlos didn’t stop him from wanting to cross, and lives were lost that year.”

Kikka thought of the gentle farewell, the nixi fading like spun sugar, back from whence they came. A whole soul lost to a giant womb.

“It’s a hard thing to explain to humans — life and death, for us,” Lu said gently. “The divide in this world seems borderline impossible to bridge sometimes.”

Kikka stuck her hands back in the ground. Tanith was transporting earthworms to higher ground, but she was clearly listening too. “For now, things are fine though?”

“Yeah,” Lu answered. “We go rounds with each other every few months, and then the rest is history.”

The weeks come and go. The field is cleared of debris and no one is rolling rocks back into her path. Still. Autumn is upon them, and the fact of the matter is that Kikka will have to accept she’ll be living at the mercy of the Guide and his helpers for the winter.

Tanith knocks on her door, hair knotted and unkempt, and sits herself at the table like she belongs there. Her hands are dirty and mud covered, like she’d forgotten how to separate land folk from her kind, and mixed them in between. Kikka still finds her to be an enigma — there’s so much clarity and devilishness in her face, but there are plenty of human behaviors she’s yet to translate for herself.

It makes Kikka nervous, if she’s honest. She’s a clever child.

“Work today?” Tanith asks. Her blonde curls are in tangled locks around her face, still damp at the ends. She’d been ashore for a while, doing what, Kikka could only guess.

“Maybe.” Kikka looked at her. “What do you do when you’re not with me?”

“Spy,” she muttered. “Watch shore.”

“What’s there to do in Sinnlos when you’re not on patrol?”

She eyed Kikka. “Lots.”

“Do you collect shells like Lu?”

“No.” She wrinkled her nose and sunk in the chair, head completely slack on the back support. “I’m successor.”

“To whom?”

Tanith touched her mouth and frowned. It was the common gesture of the tongue-tied, the expression of the nixi that did not know the words. “Mother,” Tanith said at last.

A shiver crawled up Kikka’s spine. “The one who oversees Sinnlos? I’ve heard little about the laws of Sinnlos or who determines them — Lu’s mentioned a council of elders. I know the Guide isn’t included in that circle, but his work still takes much trust…”

Tanith was boneless. “Guide unimportant. Keeps busy.”

“Unimportant,” Kikka repeated tonelessly. “Wait, I thought his decision was supported? Everyone helps him keep the mythology alive…”

“Choice, yes. Punishment for strike. Land humans never friends.”

Kikka rubbed the back of her own knuckles calmly. She rather felt like stepping out and splitting wood with the single long hatchet at her disposal.

“Are we friends?” Kikka asked.

Tanith finally opened her eyes again, and this time her expression was tender, even though her foggy eyes always promised a storm, she even smiled. “Belong with us,” she said. “Human. Nixi now.”

“I haven’t stopped being what I am,” Kikka said, “and I haven’t changed much either.”

“Blind self,” Tanith said. “Sinnlos touched. Ours. One of us.”

Kikka didn’t press it further. She got up and poured herself water from the pitcher on the counter and stared into its depths. The well outside she had dug deep to form a reservoir. She knew the source and also had no alternative. But this was crystal clear, filtered through rock and grains of sand. She didn’t believe it to be the same. The island was an isolated mass in the center of it.

More than likely, Tanith referenced the same spiel that she’d heard from the Guide: Sinnlos forces one to make hard decisions. Kikka thought choosing to live had been that, but maybe there was something else she hadn’t thought of.

Tanith had gotten up to follow her, and she lifted the pitcher off the counter to stare into it. “Crystal,” she said. “Snow melt.”

“The ground filters it. It’s more unnatural for water to be so murky…”

Tanith’s gaze turned cool and she moved to wander around the house instead, touching the poker for the stove, running her palms over the rocks that were built into the chimney with packed clay and sediment, peering around the partition at the palette with it’s neatly folded blankets.

For all that she resembled a girl, and her smile was so disarming when it was on full display, by herself Kikka felt the impression of a blade underneath it all. A wrong step, a wrong conversation, the wrong implication — she could be killed in this house and there would only be a handful that would argue — or would they? — her kindness toward those far off from her. But Tanith wasn’t prone to violence, just indiscretion, and it was her constant observing state, her thirst for knowledge and reason, that made Kikka nervous. Because surely it was reasonable and made sense that she didn’t belong here after all, that her presence on this island was the intrusion of humanity into their home that they’d always feared.

Tanith turned sharply to look at her. “Idea,” she said. Her smile lit up her whole face. “Swim. Meet mother. Curious, too.”

Kikka froze. “I’m sorry?”

She grew impatient and leapt for Kikka’s hand, twining their fingers together. “Sinnlos safe,” she urged. She tugged, and Kikka stumbled forward, shaken from her shock. Her grip was made of iron, cold and unmoved.

“Tanith, it’s dark still…”

“Present answers,” Tanith argued. “Smooth confusion. Better now.”

Suddenly they were outside. The door closed behind them with a bang and Kikka was blinking into startling darkness, lead through the blackness of the trial by memory and the force sweeping her along. She wasn’t sure she could stop what she had started. A few minutes of this and everything was blue and gray, and they stumbled between two large rocks, which framed the walk to the house from where they started. In the haze, Kikka could barely make out the first shelter: regulated to a shed, it stood gray in the night. Lu would be in it normally. But it stayed unlit, and Kikka’s nerves grew. No one was home.

The shore came upon them quickly. The fog was along the lake further out, metallic and fuzzy. Somewhere in the far distance, the bridges were groaning under the burdens they bore across the lake. In an hour, the magic would cease and the sun would burn it all off in a slow show. Every now and then, frogs could be heard.

Tanith paused to glance back at her, eyes silver and leaded. “You safe.”

Kikka’s fingers clutched her empty scabbard. She was reaching for a memory.

Then they were walking over rocks, and Kikka’s boots stumbled into the water. She sucked in a breath as the cold made her seize with terror.

Tanith let go and slunk further in. “Safe,” she insisted. She held out her hand for Kikka to take, but she remained still as stone. She only stepped into the water during the daylight hours, only walked along the shallowest portion where she could see far out, where no mysteries or surprises could remain hidden.

“Tanith, I can’t go where you go.”

“Magic. Trust.”

Kikka turned to return to the shore — then her head went underwater, the shock of the cold squeezing the breath out of her. She hung suspended in the open water, no sense of ground under her, like she’d stepped off a cliff and not simply further along the shore.

Her eyes stung when she opened them, blinking furiously, and was met with nothing but a haze. Of course. There were no lamps to look up out at, no sun to make clear what remained obscured, no knowing which way to go or what direction to flee.

Fear stiffened her limbs. The last time she’d fallen into the water like this someone had tried to kill her. That’s what she had wanted to tell Tanith.

The water cushioned all around her with a gentle pressure. As a girl, she’d loved the icy sting of the creek, the freezing joy of leaping into the lake in early June, where one still saw snow at mountain peaks. She didn’t know when that changed. When one grows the mysteries that make up life get answered and the revelations steal away the magic.

Sinnlos is different; answers put the magic in.

Creek and groans echoed around her skull and suddenly a hand was grasping hers, tugging on it insistently. But it wasn’t Tanith’s small hand, or the wide palm of Lu’s.

A figure hovered before her, even darker than the water, seemingly drinking in any bits of light around it.

Then water was rushing by her ears and she felt stretched as the current pulled her through, unsure of how she even got here, or what unexplainable thing was happening now.

She was dragged up onto shore by hands under her armpits. She laid in shock like a beached fish, half-drowned and paralyzed from confusion. She turned on her side and coughed up water, gasping, as the memory returned stronger than ever: watching the Guide’s lamp get hazy through the broken plank of the bridge above, disappearing into the slow darkness below.

Kikka craned her head back. A humanoid figure, as dark as coal, was metallic and glittery above her. No human features gave hint of an identity. It was the lake manifest. She dragged the back of her hand over her mouth and tried not to move.

Tanith was babbling nervously, a slew of words and languages mixing that Kikka couldn’t follow. She gestured at Kikka and then looked defeated, the strength falling out of her limbs.

“Patrol,” she said. “Not welcome. Crossing night. Didn’t know.”

The dark figure above bent low, hands lighting gently on Kikka’s shoulders, then pulling her up. It spoke to her, clicking noises that Kikka could never echo herself.

Tanith gripped Kikka around the shoulders. “Sleep,” she urged. “Peace.”

“I’m sorry,” Kikka said. “You scared me.”

Tanith just looked tired.

But the fire couldn’t burn the dampness out of her.

Suddenly everything was up in the air. She couldn’t be a bridge between these worlds, not if she couldn’t meet anyone half way.

Kikka woke with no recollection of why her hair was wet or the bedding smelled like lake water. She didn’t sleep walk. Or at least, she didn’t leave the house.

Discomfited anyway, she pulled a book from the shelf and sat about reading. The weather had gotten stormy during the course of the morning. She could hear the branches smacking against the roof. Better to stay inside until she could no longer stand it.

Later in the afternoon, Lu was stoking the fire, and he looked gaunt.

“Hi,” he said. Kikka stared at him. She marked her page with a finger, then realized she’d fallen asleep in the chair and the book was already flat.

“You were dreaming,” he said. “A nightmare, I think. Sorry, did I scare you? I did knock.”

“No,” Kikka said, but her face felt stiff, and showed every bit of the lie. “Yes,” she corrected. “I hadn’t realized, I thought…”

Lu smiled at her kindly, nervously, then looked sheepish. “Kikka, this may be weird, but. Do you want a lock on your door?”

“Yes,” Kikka said. Lu leaned back in his chair, so she could see past him. “Good. Because I installed one.”

“You really are the best,” she told him. His look was sad, but he didn’t refute her statement.

“Hey, when you’re feeling up to it, I want to show you something.”

“Show me what?”

“My kind.” Lu moistened his lips. “There’s… a celebration happening tonight. There’s no getting out of it for me, but I thought it’d be more fun if I had your excellent company.”

Kikka smiled. “I’m sure the Guide would go with you if you asked.”

“He is coming. Well, actually, he’s leading the ceremony.”

“What’s it for, exactly?”

“Well. Nan is dying. She’s lived a long time in this lake. She’s been growing weak.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a send-off,” Lu said gently. He wrapped his arms around himself. “We’re saying goodbye. After tonight, she’ll disappear. We don’t have funerals like humans do… I mean, we grieve of course, but there’s no body afterward. We just… return to Sinnlos. Pretty funny, considering we bleed.”

“I won’t be intruding?”

“Not at all,” Lu insisted. “You might understand us better after. Even I think it’s important. Of course, if you don’t want to come, you don’t have to, and I don’t want you to feel forced or pressured to uh, watch her pass…”

The chair legs scraped back. “As long as I don’t have to tread water for an hour, I’d like to go.”

“Great,” Lu said. His smile still looked strained, and Kikka wondered what he was neglecting to share.

The ceremony wasn’t far off. Kikka was lucky that the south shore extended so far to the Meeting Place, as she only had to pull off her boots and roll up her pants to walk out to the rocks, where she could comfortably sit and observe. Though the wind was still blowing and it made the surface of the lake virulent against the shore, it was bearable, the wind only throwing water up at her with particularly wild gusts.

Lu pressed in against her side, blocking part of the breeze. “Why here?” Kikka asked.

He pointed out in front of them. “There’s a great drop out here. The shelf disappears entirely and it’s almost the deepest part of the lake. It’s the darkest part of the water, too. No light reaches the bottom. None of us will have to watch her final moments as Sinnlos takes her back.”

Kikka said nothing.

All around them, other nixi were starting to surface. Some appeared as humans, but most were glittery and black, barely noticeable along the dark water, they could have been debris. Kikka stayed quiet and observed. Whatever Lu wanted her to see could be startling, but she didn’t feel any desire to leave.

“You’d think the weather was nice,” she murmured.

Lu grinned. “Sorry we can’t control that.”

One by one, more nixi appeared, and at the horizon line the last rays of the sun were trailing through, turning the edges orange and pink. The wind still whipped through, but no one noticed or cared, and Kikka hunched into her cloak as at last, another figure appeared, even further out. Murmuring started all around them. At the figure’s side was Nan.

Lu stiffened. “That’s Null with her, what is he doing?”

Kikka glanced at him. “They’ve seemed like family…”

“Once. They share their post but they butt heads a lot now, so much I thought they wouldn’t even acknowledge each other, but maybe I was wrong…”

“I haven’t seen the Guide.”

“He’ll speak,” Lu muttered. “I don’t want to admit it, but he is an effective speaker.”

“What about Tanith?”

Lu turned his whole body to look at her, surprise blooming across his face. “She’ll escort Nan down to the Matriarch, who will take her the rest of the way. You’ve heard what else though, right? I hadn’t thought to explain much of our body to you, but let me put it this way: Tanith will eventually become the head. This is part of the process.”

“She’ll replace the current leader.”

“Yes.”

Kikka stared out across the water. No blonde curls waved in the breeze. “I know your appearance doesn’t reflect your age or experiences, but it’s hard not to think of her as a child. It seems like a grim task.”

Lu laughed. “If you could hear her speak in our tongue, you’d know how much of a child she is. But I think your presence makes her relax especially. She’s so mischievous with you! It’s been good for all of us, having you here. Sometimes I think we’ve forgotten how to have empathy for anyone other than ourselves. And for Tanith especially… this could change the future. Maybe.”

“It’s not like us humans have made it easy.”

“No, but we’re stubborn too. And some of our voices are louder than others. The Guide’s in particular,” Lu snipped.

Kikka leaned into him. “I hope you two can repair whatever bond you had before… everything.”

“We were never close,” Lu confessed. “He’s just an extravagant worrier, and I was a concerning nixi. He hates failure, more than anything. And I’m the worst in recent history. But my antics lead me to you, so it worked out.”

They fell into a comfortable silence. Kikka watched the sky get grayer, the pink stretching all the way overhead. Sinnlos had so many more colors than it allowed anyone to see.

“Here we go,” Lu muttered. He pointed and Kikka followed the line of his finger.

Tanith stood out on the rocks with Nan, and beside them was the Guide, as sharp looking as ever.

He seemed to spot the two of them immediately, holding still, then casted his gaze across the rest of the nixi all around him.

“Good evening everyone. It is about time for us to send one of our own off. If anyone has parting words they would like to say, now is the time to come and share them with Nan. We will commence when everyone is ready.”

“Will you speak with her?” Kikka asked.

Lu shook his head minutely. “We’re fairly distant.” He hesitated. “Will you?”

Kikka thought about the extra hands on the house, the faces at the door while she lay exhausted from sickness. Multiple people crowding around and tending to her, showing concern and care that she’d only ever expected from Lu, but was given freely anyway. “…I would regret it if I did not.”

“Of course. I’m glad I brought you then. Wait a minute,” Lu murmured.

He left his cloak with her and leapt down to the smaller rocks below. Then there was the water, and he disappeared beneath its surface with barely any movement at all. Other nixi glanced at her, some waved, and Kikka loosened her hands from beneath the folds to return it. She felt ridiculous being the only one bundled against the evening’s descent, and now guilty for being present at all and intruding on tradition. The limits of the human body were on full display tonight. She’d be damned if she went swimming at all now, even for a goodbye.

Lu climbed out of the water onto the rock in the distance and talked briefly. The Guide zeroed in on him like a hawk. Kikka watched anxiously.

Without ceremony, everyone converged in the water at once.

She didn’t even have time to think about what she would say when they were suddenly before her, dripping water and staining the gray rock to darkness.

“Kikka,” the Guide greeted. His face was open but impassive.

“Good evening,” she said.

Lu took his seat beside her and was silent.

Nan stooped in front of her, gray hair soft along her shoulders. Her expression was slack and gentle and Kikka felt warmth bloom in her belly, a smile easily forming along her face.

“Nan, it’s hard to fathom that I won’t see you after tonight.”

“It’s been a long time coming. Sinnlos has been calling for my return for years now.”

“You must feel ready then.”

“Yes.” Nan bent down to Kikka’s level and took her hands. Kikka stared into her face, the gray eyes looking back, the soft glitter of dark patches across her skin, like she could no longer hold one form without the other. If they were only meeting for the first time, Kikka didn’t think she’d ever think that Nan was anything other than human. But even now, the line was fine. The only differences between them was their physiology.

“Thank you for making me feel welcome here. And sharing your precious time with me.”

“I’ll admit, I was not thrilled at the idea of your presence here. But you’re a stranger even among your kind. It seems fitting that you should live with us. You’ve done no harm to our community.”

Kikka squeezed her fingers. She held her breath, and then. “Disappearing… will it hurt?”

“Perhaps,” Nan murmured. “But no more than carrying on for any longer. This body is tired.”

“I see. Well then. I won’t keep you.”

“Goodbye, Kikka.” Nan looked at Lu. “And you. You’re more noble than you realize. Goodbye, Lu.”

“Goodbye,” he croaked back. “Go swiftly.”

And it was over as quickly as that.

The Guide nodded at Kikka, and then they were all descending back into the water.

“How wonderful that everyone can say their farewells. With humans — you never know when we may breathe our last, or disease will get us, or war, or our bodies break for no obvious reason. This is painful, but good.”

“You get closure, you mean.”

“Yes,” Kikka said. She breathed deep then scrubbed her face. “Thank you for bringing me.”

Lu burrowed back into the cloak beside her. The ends of his hair were still wet, but neither cared. “Of course! She was really happy to see you, you know. Honestly, this is probably the happiest I’ve seen her. I think dying must be a kind of a relief, when you’re ready for it.”

They fell silent.

Living was the hard part.

After Nan sunk below the water for the final time, the crowd of nixi fell silent. The sky over head deepened into a dark blue for the evening, the sun finally yielding to the end of the day. It was like Nan had taken it with her.

But the peace didn’t last for long.

A nixi clambered out on the rock the Guide lingered on, and he rushed to and fro, shaking water like a dog. The Guide leaned over him, inquiring, and the peace turned to shock.

Murmuring swept across the water like a low hum. Their chatter sounded like branches in the wind, all rubbing against each other. The Guide was stiff, but he gestured for quiet and calm.

“Lu, what are they saying?”

He focused, leaning forward and away from her. His mouth moved silently, then he stilled, and turned to her with grief on his face. Sudden cheering rose across the water, while others looked unhappy or surprised. Many nixi turned to stare at her, and Kikka’s heart flipped nervously. She knotted her wind-bitten fingers in her cloak.

“Has something terrible happened?”

He grimaced.

“Yes. Do you remember that town you were heading to when you first crossed the lake?”

Dread settled in her stomach. “Hemer?”

“That’s the one. That nixi over there is a patrol man. Apparently, the town’s residents are fleeing, and they caused a disturbance along the shore.”

“Did he learn the state of the town?”

“Only that it’s burning,” he said quietly. “It’s unclear why at this point. I’m sorry, Kikka. I’m sorry you’re listening to this.”

All around them the whooping and cheering grew louder. This was good news in a lot of ways, for Sinnlos had one less neighboring town to worry about. But Kikka felt exhaustion settle upon her like bad weather. Her country was losing its grip. The people who would suffer the most would be civilians and farmers caught in the crossfire of whatever calamity had visited the town this time. And she was here, unable to do anything about it, and no longer part of that world anyway.

She closed her eyes briefly. Across the water, without her knowing, the Guide had also turned to look at her, but Lu pulled her to her feet, and before Kikka could be wounded any more they were descending down the gray rock, into the shallowest part of the water and returning to the island. The nixi’s chatter lingered in her ears long after she stepped onto the shore and she didn’t care if anyone thought her a traitor for the grief taking residence in her heart.

The house is finally graced with a full kitchenette, a large hearth, a stone counter, and new chairs.

It reminds her of the barracks, of sitting around with a full belly in the company of her coworkers, talking about their aspirations, and the many, many roadside inns she’d slept in, cramped in beds with other guards, all hurrying to sleep and be steady on their feet for everyone else, never a lick of sense for themselves.

For the first week, Kikka’s so emotionally distraught she can hardly stay in the house without longing for old company. Lu is patient though, and when she finally tells him her reasons for being overwhelmed he dives into the lake in a fit of joy, and returns with a handful of his favorite shells to line the windowsill with.

It’s like the house she remembered as a girl. Except, she’s not her ailing mother, or exhausted father, and she’s not trying to feed two small mouths.

There are slats that fold open to let in light on the warmer days — not that there are many, but now the house breathes — and the floor plan is open and wide with a great hearth. There’s enough room for several bodies to sit comfortably. It’s a space that’s reserved for her, but can be shared when she wants the company. It’s not lonely with just her.

She can barely see the floor of the first build; Lu’s craftsmanship was surprisingly sharp and cumulative.

“Please don’t build me anything else,” she practically begs.

Lu grinned. “Maybe in a year or two. Just for fun.”

“Many human contractors would envy your steady hands.”

He shrugged. “I wanted to do a good job.”

“I loved the first one. But this is really special.”

“I just thought… you should feel really comfortable when you’re here. I can’t do much else, so.”

“Lu. You’ve done more than you know.”

He smiled wistfully. “We could go back and forth on this all day. Thank you for believing in me. Now — can I show you my favorite space?”

Kikka opened her arms. “Be my guest.”

“Here,” he said, and shot into the bedroom. Kikka followed his footsteps across the floor, around the partition. Lu stopped in front of the slats in the window and opened them up. He yanked up a wide, flat board that was laying against the wall and slid it through the nearly invisible indents along the wall space.

“I didn’t notice that.”

“Now you do.” Lu turned around to reveal the bench. “And one more thing.” He pushed the right shutter open to reveal the sloping roof above — there, dangling just in view was a string of gray and white shells. They swayed gently, brushed against each other, and sounded with music.

Further out through the trees, one could just make out Sinnlos’s gentle touch along the sandy shores. Kikka leaned against the wall.

“I thought this would make a nice reading nook, or you could even plant something under the window. I have more shells than I know what to do with, by the way. If you want another batch of them let me know —”

“Lu.”

He was grinning ear to ear. “Overwhelmed?”

“Do you do anything for yourself?” she asked gently.

Lu wrapped his arms around himself and mirrored her position. “Sure. You know I have hobbies, but. Well, I guess you’re well-being has kind of become one.”

“This home is yours too, you know. You can come by any time.” He simply smiled and squeezed her hand.

Without ceremony, they closed the shutters against the cold.

“You know, when I was really young and I went to the market with my mother, sometimes merchants would have these very intricate doll houses on display. I took a job at a noble’s house once, as an escort for his daughter, and I just remember she called them miniatures. Tiny houses. Tiny buildings with small details.” Kikka reached out and squeezed his hand. “Never did I think I’d get the real thing.”

Lu’s face turned red and then purple and then he laughed helplessly. “Alright, alright. Point taken. I’ll become a hobbyist after this.”

“Make something for you,” Kikka urged, and his face was content.

It felt like most things were finally settling into place.

If Kikka had survived this long, it wasn’t likely that anyone would abandon her to her fate as a castaway.

And the nixi were the closest she’d had to a home in a long time. Never had people worked so unfailingly to include her in their lives. It was proof that being human actually met nothing.

It was the conditions that had to change. And she knew, finally, where she had to start.

At the beginning.

Out on the edges of the shore the next morning, the Guide is waiting for the sunrise.

Before she makes it to him, he turns to greet her. His appearance never changes, save for market days where he returns with a large pack over his shoulders, he always looks ready for work. They walk back to the house together in quiet, the early birds chattering back and forth in the dense brush. He stomped the mud off his shoes at the door and they entered together. She opened her arms to take the bag and was surprised at the weight. Usually her lists were essentials only, though sometimes he brought items back for the others as well. Kikka looked at him questioningly.

“I don’t think these are books.”

The Guide nearly rolled his eyes. “There was a festival happening in Polyn. They loaded me up with ale and pastries. It would look rude if I refused.”

“Kind of you,” Kikka says. She imagines he did say no, once or twice, pride notwithstanding, and people chose not to listen. Now she’s doomed to eat the same thing for a week. But still, she remembers the harvest celebrations, the delight at a job well done, the abundance of food and drink and merry making — not that she participated, firmly observing on the side lines, but she’d felt the joy as if it were her own. “Wow — apple tarts? I haven’t had one of these in a long time.”

The Guide’s smile was minuscule, but it didn’t last.

“Look…” he starts.

“Something on your mind?”

He grimaced. “Yes. I’m sorry about Hemer. We haven’t spoken about it.”

Kikka turned quiet. “Thank you. Me too.”

“What do you think will happen now?”

She held the question in her mind while she emptied the bags, sifting the perishables away from the longer lasting shelf items. There were winter apples, only just starting to wrinkle along the skin, and pressed and pitted cherries. It made her heart happy to think of the spring celebrations she’d once enjoyed as the third party — and now she had a slice of it for herself. “…I don’t know. Nearby town’s may try to retake Hemer, or they may simply provide asylum for the refugees. They could go north, to Teyfern, but that’s in the Republic. Otherwise there’s Tarntoft. But they’re a trade city, I can’t speak for their military. Otherwise those who escaped could flee to other villages, but they may bring the danger with them. This is why Hemer’s situation was so desperate in the first place.”

The Guide watched her hands. “You think the occupiers may send scouts to see where the survivors go?”

“What are you thinking?”

“That we’re about to have a problem.”

Kikka gently folded the bags closed again. “All the locals know how Garvyn’s expedition ended. I doubt you’ll have anything to worry about, but you may have more desperate people looking for someone to lead them swiftly away from the fray. I’m talking about you.”

“Yes,” he said wearily. “I thought that too.”

“What will you do?”

“My rules will still apply. It is not my responsibility to see to everyone’s safety.”

“No,” Kikka murmured. “That was mine. And I’ve abandoned it to Sinnlos.”

“You did,” he agreed.

Kikka drummed her fingers on the table. “You’ve already seen the affects, haven’t you.”

“Yes. To the northeast, someone constructed a pier. There’s a small camp. They’re curious about the bridges that only appear at night.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Kikka asked.

“I wouldn’t know. If I could live freely anywhere, I would never choose this.”

Kikka considered. “Human can’t live freely anywhere, though I understand you’re thoughts. Problem-solving is a task we face all our lives… sometimes risk leads to great reward, so we make tough calls with faith that we’ll persevere.”

“Like crossing Sinnlos.”

“Yes,” she said flatly.

The Guide’s expression just grew worse.

“What is it?”

“Nothing you can fix.”

“No, but it’s eating you up inside. Talk to me.”

He exhaled roughly. “I’ve made a mess of everything. Perhaps for nothing.”

And suddenly, it was like a door was blown wide open.

Kikka stared at him. “Would you like to tell me about it?”

“Not in particular.” The Guide closed his eyes. “Where do I start…”

“It doesn’t have to be with Garvyn.”

“I’m sick to death of that story,” he sighed. “One of my first crossings was with a woman named Lorna, who was crossing to visit her sister on the far side. She’d wrote while in poor health. She believed crossing Sinnlos was the swiftest route, even with the danger, had she not made it in time to say goodbye she believed her life already forfeit. She talked nonstop about her child. A boy. Not a mischief maker, she said.” He sat up straighter. “It was terrible. The other crosser took her lamp and left her in the dark. She called out for hours. She almost made it, on her own. But the bridges sank.”

“Almost,” Kikka whispered. “Awful.”

He nodded. “A doctor, who urgently needed to deliver medicine, asked for my services. I refused him, because I could not calm him, and I did not think he would listen. Later, word was passed to me that the patients died before he reached them. I consider it a fortune that he did not fruitlessly cross or gamble.”

“You saved him, you’re saying.”

“Perhaps. Or order took care of the rest.”

“Why are you telling me this. Do you feel guilty?”

“No. I am concerned that these small problems are about to become big ones.”

“A bit late to recognize that. I’m sure you know you can stop anytime,” Kikka murmured.

His face contorted nastily. “Yes, and what about the ones who came before? I should pass it off as a slip? What good does it do to change?”

“I don’t have the answers. But continuing this way seems like it may accelerate your path to defeat.”

The Guide walked away from the table and breathed heavily. Kikka watched the slope of his shoulders, the curl of his fingers against the softness of his sleeves as the rest of him threatened to bubble out like hot water in a kettle.

“I had another job, more recently, that was perhaps the worst one I could have taken. It involved leading a young woman named Margret across so she could reach Teyfern. She was a historian, and knew enough about Sinnlos that it was convenient to have her close where she may accidentally die. But that wasn’t so easy. Two guards bumbled their way into my schedule, and a wayward nixi also decided the time was right to try and alter his duty. It didn’t end well for anyone.”

“Do I look unhappy?” Kikka asked.

He turned to look at her. “Perhaps the worst ending was for Hemer. And everyone knows the fate of the extra help that never arrived.”

“They don’t. My company just as easily could have believed we fled to save our own skins or died from other trouble. It’s not uncommon.”

“You’re not that kind of person, Kikka! Eventually, they’ll wonder.”

“You are so convinced everything will end in disaster. Don’t you think you’re wishing for it now? If you’re so regretful of the decisions you’ve made, maybe you should step away.”

He turned silent, expression blank, then of sarcastic disbelief. “Of course, why didn’t I think of that?! And who would take my place?”

Kikka spit the words out before she could regret them. “I could.”

“You,” he said flatly, eyes narrowing. The disbelief stung. “No. Absolutely not.”

“It would be easy,” she pressured. “People die all the time out here. You’ve made it so. Wouldn’t it be convenient for you if I died? Everything would be covered up. That would be one less terror of discovery on your list of them. Rumors would start speaking of a woman who lead people across Sinnlos and eyes would turn away from you.”

“So what. You’ll play the game as I do. You’ll pick who dies and who lives — and you want that? You think you can handle that?”

Kikka felt the frustration bubble up in her. The Guide was so determined to see nothing but consequences everywhere.“You seem to believe you’re the only one who should dirty your hands, and I think you’ve allowed that role of executioner to fall on your shoulders because you feel responsible for setting everything off. Of course you see nothing but a dead end. You’ve made yourself a prophecy, and a code, and everyone follows it because they trust that your course of action is the only one.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t, but I’m tired of watching you go in circles. You’re so proud of your misery. I know you’re exhausted.”

The Guide pressed his palms flat on the table and leaned in. “Kikka, you’re misinformed —”

“Correct me then: tell me who will do this work, if you disappear. Who will keep up the charade? And consider this: no one likes watching you wring yourself out over and over. You’re upset about Hemer? So am I.”

“It’s my punishment to endure. And I may live long enough to see our ending,” he whispered. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll spare my kind this burden. You needn’t participate either.”

She stayed quiet and the Guide watched her intently. Kikka hadn’t planned for an argument, hadn’t anticipated anything more than the casual visit and drop off of food for the next week and a half — but he’d come in to her home with a confession in mind, his frustration; she didn’t know what to do. What could she do?

“It takes more than one person to keep up the dangers of Sinnlos. You’ve never been doing this charade alone,” she whispered.

Without a word, he stood straight. “You are correct about one thing. I put myself in this position — I did this to my people. And now they will hold me accountable for it as Hemer’s people flood our shore lines, and every other village demands me for a crossing to the other side. Were justice swift I would be executed. Maybe. Maybe someday, that will be my relief, and someone with a wiser mind will succeed where I’ve failed.”

“Isn’t that sort of thinking punishment enough?” she asked softly. “You’re just going in circles.”

He stared at her.

“You care so little for your kind. Or you care too much about me. Maybe we’ve ruined you.” Kikka sighed and stepped around the table and he moved back, anger flashing across his face. “Putting me in your pocket, or your heart, won’t change how any of this will end.”

She flinched. The question she wanted to ask she didn’t dare voice, but his eyes answered for her anyway, full of water and brimstone and the unknown magic of Sinnlos. The eyes of the dead.

Do you want to die? Is that all you see in your future?

He’d never taken off his cloak or shoes, and now he turned and walked to the door as calmly as he entered. The table was full of food Kikka would have to struggle to consume — free offerings he’d brought that she wished he hadn’t; now it was like she’d thrown them back in his face.

“Being here has only made me better.” Kikka stood, scurrying around the table. “I’m not looking to hurt you, or trap you, or laugh at you, I just want you to understand what you’ve done to yourself —”

“Enough,” he whispered. “My only regret is that I couldn’t spare you our fate. You’ll age here and die alone. And for what cause? For whom?”

Kikka moved swiftly. He was quiet and still and then her hands were on his shoulders, holding him steady. He was stiff under her fingers, but he tugged for only a few seconds, then held still as if frozen in time. She caught his hands in hers and held them tightly. For all that she had pegged him as uncaring when they first met, he was rather consumed by emotion when he dared to be open. She suspected he would always think twice after today.

He was wrenched between two different worlds, and he’d told her again and again which path he belonged on.

It was clear he met it wasn’t to be shared with her, no matter his intentions, whatever he deigned to share with her she’d missed the picture he’d tried to make.

“Don’t shut me out like this, I want to help you,” Kikka said, but the Guide turned, yanking his hands away.

“You don’t understand me at all.”

The back of his neck stretched white like a swan, bowed and heavy, and the back of his head shone like the distant moon. He crossed across the dirt pathway and didn’t turn back once to look at her. She should have chased him down and made him see. Her stomach flipped with anxiety, his shock and frustrations suddenly her own. She’d said something miserable.

This was the only bridge Kikka wanted to cross and she’d just watched it burn.


	2. pelagic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An almost decade later.

By lamplight she smooths out the paper, the words running together in black ink. Earlier, she’d been careless and spilled water, and the paper is curling angrily at the dampness.

She wipes it away, uneasy.

For a while now, footsteps have paced around the house and in the small garden.

Now, there’s a crack, and a curse; Kikka imagines the whole bush has toppled over.

She makes out the news, anyway:

A war, far North, past the last bridge of Sinnlos, past Drummer and Culder, skirting down through old groves all the way to Asthold, a small import town with a population of merchants. They’re planning to raid the port in two months time. Towns north of Sinnlos have not seen merchants in weeks, there was a food shortage as bandits raided the stores from the plantation towns of Fergus and Kern, and snow is expected early.

She flips the paper over.

In a narrow hand, words not meant for her, but which are shared with her anyway. The paper is thin and curled around the edges from passing between many hands, and the real cause for alarm is the wax seal on the back, a woman with a coat of arms and bushel of wheat. Official summoning from the capital, from Holmfoss.

_To Dearest Garvyn’s Son, Guide with No Name, By the Graces of Viscount Miren and the good graces of the gods, I hope you are in good health._

_This matter is of most importance, carried by our fastest rider to the location where we’ve heard you conduct your business. We know your work is busy and lonely, perhaps not as dead as the morale in the city as we prepare to face another seize attempt, we must think of those furthest from us, and we’ve chosen not to cut our losses._

_To you we have this proposal: fifty men and women from the guard to be taken North across Sinnlos no later than two weeks from your time of this letter, as tensions brew in Tarntoft we can no longer afford to move so clearly, nor can farmers and merchants expect to wait any longer before their lands are seized from them by Teyfern’s military. You are quite strict with your work, yet we must be too, and your work is specialized and advantageous to everyone involved if you participate willfully, by the good graces of everyone._

_Stay in good health, we look forward to being received by you after our departure from Drummer in two weeks times. Viscout Miren signing and witnessing for Captain Amelia, Vanguard of the Third Infantry and its Association of Reserves._

The room’s draft was getting to her. She shivered at the script.

The door opens.

Lu is standing there, several potatoes in his hands.

Kikka holds the letter in both hands, very aware of its fragile edges and the weight of the missive itself. The wax has made the underside of her nails sticky and she wipes her fingers on the underside of the table. “A call to duty,” she says softly. “They’ve already tried to decide for him. They have no understanding of how life operates outside of the capital.”

Lu snorts, but his grin is stiff, eyes tired. “What did they suggest — making him a baron with a plot of land and some fruit trees in exchange for a night to remember? Never gonna happen.”

“It could, by force.”

“All he has to do is not show up. He could play dead, or missing, or rumors could spread that Teyfern got him first — it’s easy enough to wiggle out of.”

Kikka frowned. “I don’t like that he’s being addressed directly. This is serious, Lu.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” he said tersely. He held the potatoes up closer to his face for inspection in the light of the lamps and the fire. “But Dour has back-up plans for his back-up plans, I don’t expect that even with a proposal like that he couldn’t find a believable way to make it not happen.”

“Tensions have always been stressed at the border, but its mostly farmers and tradesmen. I never thought this country would become the victim of war,” she said softly. Kikka dropped the letter on the table and leaned back in her chair until something cracked. “No one brings me news of the Capital,” she complained, and Lu swatted at her gently, chiding, no one brings northerns anything they don’t have to.

“I’ll admit, this isn’t the first time he’s gotten formal propositions, but it’s never been this desperate.”

“And desperate people do desperate things, like crossing Sinnlos.” She gestures at herself and Lu winced.

“This is bad,” she says point-blank. “If he refuses…” Kikka bit her lip. “He could very easily be accused of treason or disloyalty.”

“Well. A bit late.”

“Lu.”

“Kidding. It may not be as bad as you think, Kikka. He’ll just have to spend more time here in Sinnlos. No locals will want to try to cross without him.”

“It makes me anxious,” she admits. Lu turned to look at her and Kikka held his gaze calmly. “This is the kind of situation that’s outside of our control. If there’s a war around Sinnlos, it may be impossible to not get involved.”

“Kikka…” She smoothed the paper under her fingers, pinning it flat to the table. It was the kind of thing she was surprised the Guide hasn’t simply thrown in the fire in a fit of contempt. She held her breath then released it. She might. By the end of the night.

She gathers her glass from the table and slides further along the bench. Lu knocks her with one bony knee to settle beside her; forgiven.

The dirt on Lu’s hands, his knees and elbows, make her wrinkle her nose. She catches his wrist to hold under the light, knowing her own will be stained and not caring. “What were you doing out there? Did you find some strays?”

He waggles them at her. “Yes. They grew out from their rows.”

“You’re starting to get a fifth sense for this now. Maybe I’ll put you in charge next spring.”

“We could run a small business on Sinnlos grown potatoes. I’ll sell them in Polyn to the drunkards and buy you a different vegetable.”

“Thoughtful,” she murmurs.

Kikka settles in, holding the formal request in her head, reasoning why the Guide had done something so provocative as sharing.

Do you want my advice, she wonders. It’s going to be the same as yours, but we won’t be lucky.

Lu gently pulled it from under her hands. “…We can’t really win this one. I think his methods may be best for managing this.”

“He shouldn’t travel alone right now.”

“Kikka, he’s the person least likely to suffer injury out of all of us.”

Kikka didn’t say anything. Unbidden, she tucked away the dog-eared page of handwritten script in the Guide’s clear, steady hand that he’d folded between the pages.

_What do you think? Will good things still come from a partnership?_

The reality is: it didn’t have to be like this.

No one should have been asking such loaded questions to start.

The meeting did not include her, but most things don’t, because regardless Lu will attend and tell her all that she needs later, or a few others — the ones who know Kikka has tried to make her existence as small as possible. Despite the fact that her presence is no small thing, issues were hammered out years ago now — brawls on the beach, debates and arguments, and finally — small inputs from those with voices: the Guide, and the Matriarch’s small successor.

Now, Kikka strides back and forth across the shore. The sun is up but the sky has decided it has no interest in supporting her affairs, so it stays dark, and drizzles lightly, and Kikka glowers out at the water. Maybe if she swam out they’d fish her out again, or maybe she’d agitate the patrol that hung around the east shore of the island, scaring fish and local water fowl.

She did none of those things.

She listened to the silence and wondered, if she listened hard enough, if she’d hear the sound of iron striking iron from miles and miles away.

But she couldn’t remember it, for how long she’d lived on the island made her forget most things.

Kikka followed the shore north toward the shallow waters but felt no desire to get her feet wet. The rain still drizzled down from above and she shuffled through the sand toward the tall grasses, even as her the water soaked her pants and the hem of her cloak. When the weather was miserable and her thoughts were circling around like vultures, the only thing to do was move around.

Inevitably, in all her wandering she came across the path to the peak, and while it was slick with mud Kikka hauled her body up the hill. The meeting would not be over until they started surfacing at the south shore, and since the walk was a good hour away there was little point in journeying down there without certainty. The climb up the hill was gradual, then suddenly steepened at the switchbacks, where Kikka braced her hand along the limestone rocks and climbed higher, her palms wet with moss. It looked like a gray curtain had suddenly obscured the lake, all traces of sun swallowed by the sudden blackness. The air felt colder up here, where the wind could bite at her, and she was more exposed to the elements.

Still, the large pines were waving cheerfully when she reached the ridge, and a long open field, sheered clean by wind and the elements of trees, was waving gently.

“I have a lot to complain about today,” Kikka groused. She tramped along the edges of the field, keeping to her usual path, and at the end of it two stone large stones sat side by side. They were too large for her to have carried, and Kikka didn’t like to ask the nixi to do heavy lifting for her unless it was absolutely necessary. And she would have deemed this necessary were it not for the fact their proximity had always been so. Twin markers, guarding and overlooking the island below.

“Hello Bemelle, hello Margaret. The world is terrible without you, though you’re not missing much right now. Despite measures taken, Sinnlos is about to be caught in a war. A war. I suppose Teyfern saw an opportunity for expansion, and considering how poor the capital’s been at moving guards northward, you know the people haven’t been cared for.” Kikka took a breath, and then knelt to pull pine needles off the rocks. “I still think about Hemer. I’m thinking about it now. It’s about to become a military town, and not one of ours. A lot of good I’m doing out here playing gardener!”

“As usual, everyone here is fine. There’s a food shortage, so I’m being careful with everything in the root cellar. I won’t starve, but it makes life tense anyway. Lu says hello, too. And the Guide. I’ll come back again soon. With better news, I hope.”

Kikka slipped on the way down, and mud streaked her legs. She shook herself and sighed, and carried on. She’d have a glorious bruise later.

Morning is gray and still. The weather must by abysmal, as not even the sun casts light, just warmer shadows, and some parts of the island suffer in an impenetrable darkness.

Kikka doesn’t let it deter her.

She crawls out from under warm blankets and coaxes the coals of the fire with a poker. They glimmer dully, sadly. She throws dead wood on them until the blaze is strong, until she’s blinking water out of her eyes. This is the morning ritual she’s lost everything for: the ability to wake every day at her own pace.

She lights a lamp and pours water from the bucket by the table in a kettle. It hangs on one several metal hooks over the stove, where it sits idly until steam starts pouring out of the nozzle. A heavy iron thing someone had fetched from an old camp, there are old initials scratched in the bottom of it.

It’s at this time that a quiet knock comes at the door, nearly hesitant with its softness. She wonders if she heard it at all. Kikka pulls her long coat further around herself before maneuvering around the small table in the room. Cold air rushes in.

The Guide stands there in the dark, only the fire from the hearth illuminating his features. Rain drizzles softly and blows sideways with the breeze.

Silently, Kikka moves to let him in.

He sheds his wet cloak by the door and Kikka takes the boiling water off. For a few peaceful moments, it’s just the sounds of feet over the flooring, shuffling of clothes over skin, the snapping of wood being eaten by the flames. She already knows he’s in a foul mood and they’re both pretending she’s none the wiser, until one of them speaks.

There is plenty of tea in the cupboard, which is a luxury and not a necessity, but the stock does not fluctuate so often that it needs replacing; still, she takes less than she needs, just enough to taste, and forgoes sugar entirely. There is still plenty of bread from yesterday, and she’s been contemplating experimenting with potatoes, of which there are enough to drown in but will expire eventually. But her appetite is not present.

“Fergus has been officially seized by the military,” the Guide ventures at last. “There were messengers distributing their message in Lynd, as a ‘courtesy.’” He drums his fingers softly on the table, then leaves them half-curled along the wood.

Kikka nods her head.

“It won’t be any time soon that I’ll be able to get supplies. Depending on how long things continue, I may have to go to Creagby. The bluffs make it difficult to scale from the north, so it should be left alone for a while.”

“That’s a two day trip,” she said.

He looked at her, brow pinching. “We must wait on you hand and foot to keep you alive, a chore I don’t take lightly.”

Kikka spread her hands helplessly. Whatever she says now will agitate him. “I’m grateful for everything.”

Still, he doesn’t look happy. “Things are going to shit,” he says instead. “It’s amazing how competitive armies are. All it takes is a few charismatic people to instigate an entire conquest. Hemer was completely razed to the dirt, except for the barracks. The soldier’s burned good houses and sleep in tents in the same spots. Sometimes, I wonder…” he trails off.

Kikka knows the pondering, has done it herself time and time again: what if I’d made it across the bridges? What then? What of Hemer?

She doesn’t voice it.

“You should stop going into town for a while. Stay in Sinnlos, out of sight.”

He frowns. “And what. Put everything on hold? There’s work to do tonight.” How else will I earn what I need for you unless I continue to serve the people? How will I continue my dream — our dream — unless I suffer and toil in all conditions?

“Just for a while,” Kikka said. “After that request, I don’t think you will be allowed casual business anymore…” He looked at her, then moved wordlessly to the cupboards.

He looked calm by what he saw.

Kikka watched the back of his head, the fire casting strands of gold through it. It made her uneasy, still, sometimes, what a perfect imitation of a man he could be.

He drew away, then moved back to the fire. He echoed human habits with increasing familiarity. It was only when he came to see her after a dark night, unmoved by the time of day or the hour, that he felt more inhuman, more like a part of Sinnlos was crawling around inside him, like she may have invited it inside instead.

“What will you do today?” he asked.

“Fire wood.”

“You need more?”

“Yes. There’s a dead tree — left, not too far from the pit. It’s been there for months.”

“Hm.” He wrapped his arms around himself.

“You won’t stay?”

“I can’t. Patrol.”

The Guide is already stoking the fire when Kikka staggers out from behind the partition. The coals hurt her eyes to look at, and shafts of light color the Guide’s skin and hair orange and pink.

Kikka stilled. “You’re going back tonight.”

He shook his head. “Not there, specifically. And not like this.” Not as this shape.

“Scouting,” she said. “They’re really not deterred by the prowlers?”

The Guide looked at her. “They already tried to cross the bridges a week ago. I’ve been dropping them early to frighten them, but they’re not having it. There’s a large number of them, so of course they’re as stupid as cattle.”

Kikka pulled out the chair beside him and dropped into it. “Did something else happen?”

His lashes were lit with the flame. His eyes flickered away and back again. “They’ve launched boats. We’ve allowed none to return.”

“…On your orders?”

He looked at her firmly. “A decision I did not have to make, but would have made had it been in my hands.”

“Then I don’t have to tell you what I think.”

The Guide sighed. “I never thought I’d be dealing with an invading army. How stupid. They’re carelessness will make this easier.”

Kikka saw it easily enough, the image playing under his closed eyelids: the lake turning dark and muddy with the shredded bodies of infantry. Once upon a time that image would have churned her stomach, but now it’s more complicated and more simple, all together: this is the home she wants to protect. Even had she not been here: still an enemy she’d leave to defeat.

“Will you confront them?”

He shook his head. “I suspect my first refusal was the only chance they intended to give me. If I go back it will end with violence.”

“Take my sword, if you’d like. At least no one will question your strength with that.”

He looked at her. “…With everyone’s nerves, you’d best keep that on you. There may be an attempted repeat of last time.”

There have been two remarkable events since Kikka started living on the island: a man got past a patrol with a boat, and was eventually turned capsize by the Nixi. A Nixi was put to death after associating with a human. In the trial, they pointed out that they had adopted a human into their midsts, why shouldn’t they start acclimating to human ways? Because it’s a betrayal. Because they are not meant to leave. They are the guardians and sons/daughters/children of Sinnlos. They’ll die without it to sustain them. After the trial, Kikka did not see much of the Nixi for a while. They were angry with her, and shunned her, perhaps to hide their own grief at the loss of one of their own.

Kikka said nothing, just stood again and put the water on a higher hook as it started to rumble again.

At last the Guide tossed another log on the fire, then walked to the window to open it, looking out at the soggy landscape. “Lu may hate me for a while after this. He’ll be especially savage for a while. I expect he’ll be here with you. And I hope you’ll do your best to keep him here.”

“Funny. He’s worried about you. I’m not going to tell him not to be.”

It was this that made the Guide’s mask crack, and he curled his fingers upon the counter, staring into nothingness. “It’s true he’ll be called upon, if the worst comes to pass. If the army tries to cross in mass. He’ll have to fight. He won’t like it, but he’ll go.”

Kikka looked at him. “You know they will. If they’ve seized the towns, Sinnlos will be next. It’s a huge obstacle to go around.”

“…Garvyn’s expedition was much easier to deal with.”

“You want to repeat that?”

“No,” he said, voice flat. “I don’t want to deal with any of this.”

“I know. But this is how things have to be, isn’t it?” He turned sharply to her, and Kikka traced the expressions across his face one by one. “If you have use of me, you know where to find me. I am always glad to listen and offer my thoughts. If the bridges prove too manic I’d expect the army to accept going around it. Silence may be your best ally here. Watch, listen, and wait.”

Kikka stepped into his space and gripped him by the arms, gently moving him. The Guide stepped to the side and watched. She scooped herbs from the ceramic pot ont he counter and his mouth twitched.

“Don’t say leaf water,” she warned.

“Then I won’t. It does smell nice.”

“My point,” Kikka continued on, “is that we don’t have enough information. Locals all know to leave Sinnlos alone, you’ve instructed them well with that. And the invaders could learn too. Right now, they’re confident. They’ll deflate when they’re not met with success.”

The Guide strode to the fire and brought back the hot water. “I’ll keep your thoughts in mind,” he said calmly.

Kikka watched the dried leaves expand and swell from the heat. She looked at the Guide, his drawn face, pale hair limp and resting behind his ears, and considered: “I don’t think you will.”

Then there came another knock at the door, Lu announcing himself cheerfully, looking bright and full-faced, a heavy bag in his arms that dissipated the tension in the room with a sigh of relief. Flour and sugar, powdered cream, dried fruit wrapped in a heavily waxed paper. Lu heaved the winnings onto the table.

“There’s even spare change,” he boasted.

“Excellent work,” the Guide said. The easy smile on his face was genuine, and Kikka felt herself mirroring it without meaning to.

“Would you believe it? They knew I was coming. Had everything set aside for me.”

“Anyone try to marry you to their oldest daughter this time?”

“Not today,” Lu said seriously, “but there’s always next week.”

The Guide rolled his eyes and made for the door, carefully sidestepping around Kikka’s chair on the way out. She tried to catch his sleeve.

“Hey — you’ll come back?” she implored. “I want to talk with you more.”

“Later,” he said, not turning.

Kikka pulled her jacket tighter around her shoulders, lambswool soft and dry, and watched the door close behind him.

The tree went down with ease.

The crash echoed around the immediate hill, larger branches thundering wildly before laying peaceably on the ground, dead branches waving only slightly. Kikka examined the saw blade, its creaky and tired edges, before sitting comfortably on the trunk.

She listened to the wind, which made the tops sway and needles rain down. On some nights, she was certain she could smell the iron from a southerly, warm wind. If she tried to imagine now, the exact shape of her old home and it’s peasant buildings, winding roads choked with mud and the old barracks she’d spent much of her young adult life — the pieces became more and more vague. What did her captain’s laugh sound like again? A large brooding man, his boom carried the roof off. Who was her old bunkmate, the girl from the port town, who eventually married a merchant and enjoyed a life on the road? It must have started with an E.

Kikka mechanically began sawing off the heaviest limbs of the tree. Every time she was vexed by what little remained of her old self. It had stopped feeling like loss, and now it’s as if her old life has compartmentalized into the new so tightly that those fledgling memories only emerge when she least thinks of them.

What would be helpful now is this: some semblance of news or gossip that there is another world outside of the one she now lives on the island.

More than just the stray gasps and warnings that are constantly whistling around her, or the once upon a time corpse that tangled in the grasses along the shore, and she knew exactly how Sinnlos still stood in the larger world.

Before she can get too far, a whistle interrupts her. She gathers her breath and whistles back.

When the limb falls over her shoes, scraping her shins on the way down, it’s Null who joins her.

“Kikka,” he greets. The look she gives him is unmoved. He wilts beneath it. “Yes, I have things to share with you. Give me that blade for a while and you can breathe while I talk.”

“It’s so bad that I need to be sitting down?”

Null is a behemoth of a Nixi, or the figure he’s adopted is broad shouldered and tall, befitting of the hard labor he’s done to make her life more comfortable. His face is simple and expressive, and the beard never grows or shortens, and his hair is partially silvered, ornamented with a long braid down his back. Kikka met him after the first two weeks; he came out of the water and straight up into her face like a dog who’s territory has been crossed, and Lu played bodyguard as his presence and inhumanness was irreconcilable.

Now, she watches him cut branches much more quickly than her, strength in his limbs that she’d never have, magic and iron flowing through side by side.

“I went ashore with the Guide. We went North, to check the occupation. Villagers who had not fled in the initial seize were taken away by caravan. This army flies green flags. The Guide went about business and was turned away from the entrance. He said they were preparing to move South, but were hesitant. There was some smoke coming from their encampment. Likely burning homes or destroying property.”

“They undoubtedly heard the rumors about Sinnlos. Fire has always been associated as a way to keep predators at bay...”

“To our luck, thank the Guide,” Null conceded. He climbed over the trunk of the tree and dragged the saw across a particularly thick branch. “But our real concern after being turned away was that we were not overly questioned. We suspect we were followed and did lose the men in the brush and even went so far as to travel parallel to the shore, to throw them off. But undoubtedly they’ve already sent scouts to check the land built piers. And if they’re present at night, there could be a crossing…”

Kikka nodded. “They knew who the Guide was. His avoidance will be seen as a betrayal, regardless of his intentions.” She wound her fingers together. “You want my thoughts on this?”

“Any information…”

“They’re likely the Chancellor’s men from Surmon. Many of those men in military were discharged after over recruitment resulted in a lack of finances. They became angry and many became robbers. You remember Kern?”

“That tiny homestead…”

“Up in smoke from the invaders. Bandits razed it first, then the military men. I had always wondered who would try to seize the property again. It would be too hard to salvage territory from the other side of Sinnlos.”

“We are a great stone in the way,” Null said solemnly. “We will be caught in the middle of this.”

“We already have been,” Kikka said softly. “It started with Garvyn and Dour…”

“The more I see and hear of these atrocities that humans heap upon each other the more I think we must take an offensive role.”

Kikka shook her head. “I agree with the Guide, that would invite disaster.”

He scowled. “You’re both gutless. It’s because you cut trees day in and day out, and stay healthy because we work to keep you…”

Kikka stood. “You can be angry, but it won’t change what happens outside of this place. Keep me in your confidence or choose not to, but don’t joke that I’ve passively kept my head down.”

And Kikka understood why Null had really come to interrupt her. He wanted her confidence, her knowledge, her passion for connection to give them the foothold to the other side of this. Or maybe he just wanted to pick a fight.

“I like your company,” he said simply. “I don’t like your kind. You have a debt to repay.”

“That’s fine. What I want is the same as you: peace with our neighbors. You believe me when I say it?”

He didn’t look at her. “Yes. But seeing too, is important.”

Kikka inclined her head. High above, the pine canopies swayed, and a large osprey was preening its wings on a dead branch.

She thought of the Guide standing on the shore of her island, how he now knocked on her door, bringing goods back to a nest. She thought about him never leaving again. She thought about Lu being forced to return to his shape, like a fish now out of water, the call to defend his family having to distinguish between the one he kept on land.

It was too much to ask, even under grim circumstances that she wanted to change, that these things at least stay the same forever.

The war was already at their door.

Lu and Kikka watched the day pass with quiet unease.

A week passed since the missive and silence has been met at every pier on Sinnlos. Excepting the brief confrontation at the North pier, no one’s tried sending boats or crossing again, and the Guide’s kept his business to the east side of the lake, only carting passengers from Polyn to the west and returning immediately after.

The island has remained unoccupied all day, and the lack of activity leaves them both restless. Kikka kept waiting for someone to come running out with a fish to show her, laughing, but the water remained as still and dark as glass, and Lu picked through nearly a kilometer of shore, combing through dark shells and blue rocks and not looking impressed by any of them. She wanted to turn to Sinnlos and shake it until the answers fell at her feet.

Kikka, at last, couldn’t stand it any longer: “Will we go to war?”

Lu didn’t say anything, just turned the shell over in his hands for inspection. “We would win,” Kikka argued. The white piece rolled from Lu’s open hand back into the sand, and the look he gave her was dull.

“We won’t go to war,” he grumbled. “But someone will probably die.”

“Yes. I don’t think I’ll feel poorly about it. They took Hemer. And Tarntoft is next. They’re southbound. They could try to cut off Tarntoft from the southern roads. That would be the fastest way to speed up the process. They may even try for Sinnlos.”

“They won’t listen to local superstition, you mean.”

Kikka shook her head. “Why would they? They’re not looking to make friends. The Republic has wanted the flatlands for a long time now — they’re perfect for crops, but it was lucky that my country entered the area first.”

Lu crouched and poked through dry grass. “If they keep going south, they’ll eventually make it to your old town, won’t they?”

“If they’re successful. If they mean to reach the port before winter, they’ll have to move quickly.”

“Are you nervous?”

Kikka frowned. She considered: I can only be worried about what you choose to share with me. “Yes,” she said, calm and quiet. “But it’s likely that any of my old friends have already gone to support more vulnerable towns. They may already be dead.”

Lu winced. “Okay okay okay, so large army decides the quicker routes is over Sinnlos. Several scouted with boats, and were met with disaster. But winter is coming on quickly. Do they persist, or do they tough out the winter?”

“Does it matter? What are we going to do, when they’re already at our doorstep?”

“Meet them,” Lu muttered. “Maybe. That’s what the Council’s debating. Whether to press forward or… do nothing.”

Kikka slipped a flat stone out of her pocket and moved to the water. Still no one had surfaced, and she felt a growing agitation. Frustration at not being involved — human difficulties — and some indignation that the person who would be honest with her had chosen to stay with her. For reasons, in a less stressful situation, she’d be satisfied with.

She drew her arm back and shot it forward, wrist straight and sure. The rock skipped six times, casting only small ripples on its inky surface, before being swallowed up. Gulls shrieked at the movement in the water.

“If you weren’t here, would you be fighting?” Lu wasn’t looking at her, so Kikka didn’t look at him when she answered.

“I don’t know. Maybe Hemer only needed a few more hands to have avoided disaster. But that obviously didn’t happen.”

“So. Yes.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never regreted giving you the opportunity to stay here,” Lu breathed. “Only that it cost you someone you cared for.”

“I know,” she said. It was old news, but it never quite left either of them alone for long.

Kikka watched the lake ripple, and surged forward into the water at the sight, stopping just above her knees.

Null surfaced like a swan, still and coppery, brown hair slick and smooth down his back. Water flooded off his frame in small rivers.

“And?” Kikka prompted. “What was decided?”

Null’s gaze flicked between her and Lu, then settled firmly on her. “It was decided for us,” he said calmly. “The army intends to rush the bridges tonight.”

Lu gaped. “Are they insane?”

Kikka turned calm. “What is the solution? Will they be allowed to cross? Or prevented? Or will they be cordoned off like animals, and dropped en masse?”

He shook his head. “It will be far simpler than that. The bridges are old, as you know. It won’t hold them.”

“So you’ll let them try.”

“Better than reveal ourselves. But we will go to meet them, and see if we can’t destroy the older piers. With nothing going out into the water they’ll be less likely to think it’s a point of access for them.”

“I see,” Kikka said. “What’s the Guide’s role in this?”

“Like the rest of us, he’ll judge the situation accordingly.”

“So he’ll be there?”

“No,” Null said uneasily. He tossed his head to the side. “He has a crossing tonight with someone he didn’t want to refuse.”

Lu blanched. “So who will be leading the call to arms, if decisions need to be made?”

“The Matriarch.”

Lu sucked in air between his teeth. “That’s so unnecessary. Her presence will drive tensions up!”

Null scowled at him. “Don’t speak ill of her. Her duty is to our defenses, and meanwhile the Guide is staying committed to his task.”

“At the worst possible time. He must not be worried about this. That’s a clear sign that the rest of us are over reacting.”

Kikka trudged back out of the water. “He is,” she said firmly. “He’s just directing his attention elsewhere. He may catch the eyes of the army and move them as well, if word spreads of his departure and arrival at another shore.”

Both quieted at once. Kikka sighed and stared at the darkening sky. “The best thing to do now is wait and see how this plays out.”

The smell of kerosene made her nose wrinkle, so the sudden knock on the door and the breeze that stole through as she exited left her glad. Lu shifted from foot to foot over the pathway, looking the same as normal, minus the characteristic boyish air he worked hard to maintain. Tonight, he was a leader, whether he liked it or not.

“I’m sorry Lu. It’s unlikely you’ll see violence tonight.”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel like our plans ever go as they should.”

“You’ll be far enough away — just stay in formation, don’t over think it, and you’ll be back before you know it.”

“I wish I could take you with me. I’d feel better.”

“I’d be dead weight, I’m sorry to tell you.” They started down the path in the dark, the lantern casting them as ghoulish figures on the foliage and across every thick trunk in sight. High above, the sky was starting to mist over. In another hour, the fog would slip across the lake in velvet layers. And far, far away, the Guide would be welcoming the arrival of the bridges as they rose under his will.

Lu kicked a stray branch out of the trail and the two large boulders that marked the exit to the east shore greeted them like statues. Lu turned to look at her. “I don’t like that you’re alone here. It’s unusual.”

They stepped out into the soft sand, loose rocks clacking against each other. “Are you afraid?”

He sighed loudly. “Maybe. Yes. Okay, yes. We are all in danger, that includes you.”

“I won’t be alone for long. I could fall asleep and you’d be back before I was the wiser.”

“True enough. But I still don’t like it and you’re not going to change my mind.”

Kikka reached out to squeeze his arm and he smiled tightly. “Don’t wait up for any of us. This could be an all night endeavor. I hope the piers are easy to remove, but it’ll be difficult if the army is already on them.”

“Be careful. Don’t try to take the high ground if you’re life’s on the line.”

“It’s never been my life I’ve been leery of losing,” he snipped. He threw his arms around her and Kikka carefully kept the lantern away from his skin. “But alright. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Travel safely.” Even though Lu was so good at deflecting her comments, a chill had settled over her skin at his nervous reaching. Never had Sinnlos felt so empty of life than it did tonight.

With that, Lu slunk forward into the water, rippling and coiling into the stillness like he wasn’t almost more human than her. But he never changed shape anymore. She wondered though, on an evening like this, if any thing would ever be the same again.

They waved to each other one more time, and then he was gone.

For a long time, Kikka walked the shore line, her anxieties rising. It wasn’t uncommon for Sinnlos to play tricks on her like this — lodging its fog in her heart and mind and making her confused. But she knew what there was to be nervous about: where the direction of the Republic’s army would sweep when they realized the Guide was moving people without their consent. Surely, they’d come to arrest or kill him. Warrants would spread into every neighboring village and he’d have to change shape to pass through unseen, no longer welcome in the world of men as the lone survivor of Garvyn’s dream.

And Lu — dragging him along for the work he hated most that endangered his ability to thrive. Like someone was hoping he’d step out of line so they could retaliate. He made it easy by being vocal. That still frightened her.

But the nixi had only ever wanted to be left alone. That was the point of making one’s self out to be a monster: keeping company far at bay.

Were her nerves more steeled, she wanted to climb to the point and complain to Margret and Bemelle some more. But she didn’t want to leave the shore. Not for a while yet.

She gathered dried twigs and thick branches and old driftwood before carefully lighting dried grasses from the flame in her lantern. It hurt her eyes to look at for too long. Soon enough, she was squinting into the orange sereneness of a comfortable fire.

Kikka knew she dozed. Her eyes were heavy.

An owl called while the rest of the silence settled still and dark.

And then from the lake, something unnatural: the distinct groan and rustle of water sliding off of wood.

It’s a noise she knows and wishes she didn’t remember, the wet glide of water and magic and old planks tumbling together for another evening of charades. It’s also always the indicator of a path available for someone — but never, ever for her.

Lu’s nerves tumbled over in her head anew and Kikka staggered to her feet, listening intently.

The noise of the rising bridges only grew louder. They thundered out across the lake and echoed for miles. There was nothing subtle about bridges appearing where none should be naturally.

The only time they had ever connected to her island was upon her arrival and the Guide’s return with goods for her.

But this was an evening where he should have gone far around her vicinity, where her island should not have even appeared as a thought.

Before she could question it further, Kikka started stomping out the fire. It hissed and spat at her and she tossed sand on it in a fury. Then her lamp was in her hand, her sword was along her hip, and she was rushing toward the noise.

The bridges were coming up. They groaned and protested all the while, disappointed to be woken after so long lying dormant, with only one pair of feet on them at a time.

Another old, familiar feeling bubbled up in the back of her throat: cold panic.

But she swallowed it down and tried to think nothing of it, forced her mind to be a blank slate and her limbs to calm and relax. She shook out her hands and her feet and breathed deep. Then she started walking parallel to the shore, weaving around clumps of grass and thistle by the lantern alone.

In the distance, a barely noticeable glow slunk through the fog. It was too low to be mistaken for the moon, and the light moved as lax and carefully as her.

She knew she’d left no light on in the woods to indicate her home or presence. The only discretion she’d have to display was her appearance. And if this arrival upon her shore was about to take the trajectory she worried it would, the problems she’d be dealing with would already be partially accounted for by the Guide.

But the rest would be up to her.

“Unbelievable,” Kikka muttered. Several meters at the end of the coarse sand, a few planks floated bonelessly. They weaved together like one twines their fingers, interlocking and solidifying with only a few thuds. Then it was a real, true to life bridge, inviting her forward into the darkness. It bobbed merrily, a vessel that once upon a time tried to carry her to her death. She hadn’t forgotten. She wished she could if she had reached the other side to begin with.

Kikka took a deep breath and pulled her cloak tight. She lifted her lantern toward the darkness. Behind her, her shadow stretched almost all the way to the crooked pine trees, nearly indistinguishable from the twisting limbs.

She stepped into the water, every instinct telling her not to, and then onto the bridge.

She’d been right, to a degree. The Guide was coming for her. But he wasn’t coming alone.

The spear men were six in number, and they tromped across the bridges behind him like reined horses, broad chested and full, the gaits of men who knew how to take the first hit in a fight. The Guide spots her first but his expression doesn’t change. It takes her a few more seconds to spy the lance in close proximity to his waist.

For the first time in three years, Kikka felt a sense of location. She could guess how far she was from real land, the time of day the Guide would have collected his entourage for crossing, the town they would have departed from — had circumstances been normal — to meet him. She didn’t realize she may have been living in plain sight all along.

Kikka walked forward at a snail’s pace, hand warding herself casually, like her arrival doesn’t endanger the Guide any more than he already is. She has to believe his appearance and apprehension is part of the game he’s so at playing; he’s never been at the mercy of just anyone.

“Kikka.” The Guide called her name as soon as she was in range. She still couldn’t see the expression on his face, but the paleness of it was terrible. Blood ran from his nose, cold and dried over his mouth, as stark as day and night. Someone had struck him and he’d taken it. The story was plenty unclear. “Could you please come relight these lamps. I’m afraid this wick is low.”

“Who is that?”

“My apprentice,” the Guide replied calmly. He turned slightly to look over his shoulder. “The one who will finish the job.”

The men behind him stared at her uneasily. “There’s never been word of you taking a student.”

“That’s because my affairs are no one’s business but my own.”

“She knows the way?”

“Perhaps even better than myself.”

They all halted in front of her, the Guide several wide paces away. Kikka raised her lantern by her cheek so they could see her more clearly. She knew the sternness in her face hadn’t lessened in all her years in solitude. It took great strength not to try and match the men with theirs.

“You’ve always been an honest man so I’ll take your word,” a man behind him says. The lance withdrew and Kikka watched it for clues; no blood on the end, no stains, firm and straight — used sparingly, if at all. The stranger’s eyes met hers and he gestured for her advance. “Lass, the Guide asked you to do something. You come up real slow.”

Kikka breathed. The Guide still hadn’t met her eyes. “No need to act rashly. As you can see, my hands only carry this light.”

“Aye. I see that blade at your side, too.”

“It’s alright. It’s not been used for a while now. I’m sure you’ve also been told it’s not helpful against the Prowlers.”

“No,” the stranger mused, “but I’m sure it could slice any of us just fine.”

Kikka startled, then looked more closely.

Behind the spear men, a woman was hushing a child. Her hair was half-dried and curled, dress wet and stuck to the skin. Her eyes went wide at the sight of Kikka and she stepped sideways out of sight, feet nearly silent. But Kikka felt her heart accelerate. Her palms began to sweat.

She was prepared to face a specific kind of evil or scheme or manipulation.

Not civilians trying to survive.

“Guide,” she greeted. Her voice sounded hoarse even to her own ears.

At last, he looked at her. She stared into his dark eyes, chest constricting as the pieces began to settle. She wished he would share his plans with her. Maybe he still would. But now — he looks like he’s only come to her to make things worse.

The Guide very measuredly handed her his staff. His fingers were chalky and muddy, unusual for him, and she got a better view of the popped blood vessels along his nose. The blood was flaky, like it had been there a while. “Your lamp,” he said calmly. “Switch it out with mine. It’s still too hot.”

“Of course.” Kikka unhooked the metal cap and the lantern swung hollowly in her hand. It felt too light too, like it was also out of oil.

The weight of their audience made her clumsy. The pressure of not moving too quick nor missing a beat were feelings she hadn’t experienced since her last walk on these same bridges. The awful memories always came unheeded at times when she most needed them gone. Like now, she still remembered when he’d forcefully put her lantern back in her hand to see her to the other side of Sinnlos.

Without excitement, the deed was done. Her lamp swung merrily on the Guide’s staff, looking moderately worse for wear but it’s light was much greater in strength. It had been her constant companion for a long while now. She’d replaced the wick a good many times, carted it around in the dark along the shore until she felt safe enough without it. Then, it occupied the unexciting life of warming the kitchen and her bedroom with its sunny features.

The Guide swung open his lantern’s door and silently blew out the tiny blue flame. It sputtered once, then was gone.

“You’ll walk back in the dark?” The man peered over his shoulder, concerned. “You know better.”

The Guide didn’t take the bait.

“You will have to move swiftly to resupply,” Kikka murmured. “You know where I keep my spares.”

“Yes,” the Guide said tonelessly. He finally looked at her instead of through her, like surfacing from a bad dream, and his whole mouth twisted before he smoothed it again. He was swallowing panic. He didn’t want her to know.

His mouth barely moved when he spoke again. “The army will come from the west shore as well. We did not anticipate multiple rushes. I must go to meet them.”

Kikka found the oversight strange.

“Please do me a favor,” he said very suddenly. “And take these people to the southern shore, toward Polyn. I have another party I must attend to. I have told them that you will lead them well to the other side.”

“I will,” Kikka murmured. “We’ll move swiftly. I’ll keep them safe.”

“Good. Go further, if you must.” Then without preamble, he stepped past her and into the haze toward the distant shore. The spear man who had been hovering anxiously made to move after him, but another yanked him back by his tunic, and their boots rumbled over the wood.

“It can’t be as simple as that! What if he’s off to tattle?”

“He’s not, you fool. He could have killed us at the shore and instead he gave us passage.”

“It’s strange. I don’t get this passing of hands.”

“Sinnlos is strange. But we’re not dead. He trusts this woman, so let’s move on.”

If the Guide’s the man Kikka’s gotten to know over the years, a great amount of faith has been placed in her. This is the crowning of their friendship, even if the timing is off or not pleasurable, this is the opportunity for safety she’d always wanted: people allowed to cross in good faith, with no scheme to slowly kill them.

But she hadn’t anticipated she’d be the head of it. Nor had she thought war would lead him to think compassionately.

The group eyeball her, and the lone woman in the back had emerged to stare after the Guide regretfully. She shifted her child to her other shoulder and peered at Kikka, her eyes accusing her without saying anything. Kikka couldn’t find it in her to feel much more than shock.

But quickly, the desire to yell made her swallow.

“We’re refugees,” the exhausted men explained to her. “You may not believe us, but the army — they drove us onto the bridges, to kill us!”

“Refugees,” Kikka repeated. “From where?”

“What’s it matter! Everything is gone, we come from all over,” the woman burst out. Her hands scrabbled along the back of her child’s thin shirt. “We were promised safe passage and we were lied to. Or they changed their mind. They don’t believe the superstition about the lake. They thought they’d prove us wrong.”

“We were stupid enough to believe them for a while. But they want the lands for their people, not us!”

“Then it would have been more merciful to kill us from the start,” the woman snapped.

“Enough.” The man with the lamp had to be the leader of this group, Kikka decided. They all listened to him.

“You needn’t explain any more to me,” Kikka said. “I believe you. We need to stop wasting time. I’m sure the Guide has warned you of the dangers in Sinnlos. Do they need repeating?”

“Aye, but it’s no more dangerous than what’s already passed. We can take a gamble with these lake creatures and maybe survive, or we could turn around and be skewered on the bank instead.”

“There are creatures in the water and along the bridges,” the woman spoke up again. Two of the men stepped out of her way and she moved closer. Her body was trembling, either from fear or the cold, it was hard to say. “At the beginning, we saw several of them straight away! But none pursued us. Or we moved too swiftly. The Guide made us run.” Kikka didn’t want to think about why. She also didn’t know what it meant that the charade had changed.

“Then you were lucky,” Kikka said. “They’ll follow at a distance for miles if they’re committed. Since you’re aware, I won’t repeat what doesn’t need saying.”

The little boy on the woman’s hip suddenly turned to stare hugely at her. Kikka felt sick, but she breathed deep and tried not to think of how things could have been without the Guide’s strange rescue. She couldn’t begin to suspect where that strength came from, but she felt it in turn. “If we’re to make it before morning, we must go now, and we may need to run a portion as well, I’m sorry to tell you.”

They all looked exhausted, but more hopeful at the promise of an eventual ending, and though the darkness made their eyes rove constantly, they followed her without complaint. Like little lambs, she carried the Guide’s staff out in front of her to part the way.

Behind them, on her private island, the Guide was likely long gone. Back in the water, back the way he came as quick as possible.

His nervous confession had shaken Kikka. She wondered how much more planning had gone into the invasion of the shores than she knew.

The worst reality was suddenly upon them: they were unprepared, and they had no defenses against this foreign invader.

“What’s your name?” Kikka asked softly.

“Cordelia. Born and raised in Severton. Family’s practice is butchering. My husband’s there, second to last, the large, stinky oaf — Mathias. The narrower man, with the calm tongue — Thoren.” They both glanced at her husband. The child was limp in the cradle of his arms, legs swinging over his dark clothes. “Lovely man who used to serve as a gardener. I never dreamed of having such a well-kept yard. But people are full of surprises…”

The conversation rattled on like a game. The bridges spilled out like wind-blown grass, and every stretch of wood made Kikka nervous; was this the right path, would they all be punished if she dropped them into the lake because she couldn’t remember anything after they lost the first —

“Tough work, being out here. I don’t envy you. Look at this darkness, it’s worse than the unswept corners of a house.”

“Worse at night,” Kikka relented. A particularly old board creaked under her feet and she hopped forward. “Sometimes the dark moves.”

Cordelia stepped closer to her. “You hold that staff so steady. That Guide of yours, your mentor — he doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t like to talk at all. I was real grateful that he listened at all, mad as he looked when he came across us. My baby wouldn’t stop crying, and I was in such a shock — you know, leaders say one thing, then their men do another — the only luck was that Mathias came home early and quietly told us to pack our bags — we made it partially down the road before we were herded off like goats. I thought we’d die right there in the field.” She sucked in a breath, a low whistle of air leaving her throat. “They told us that if we wanted to leave we’d best take the short route, and so there was no choice. We knew them creatures were watching, what a terrifying feeling — but funny how, not even the water stirred, and not far along there was the Guide, coming toward us resolutely. And then he brought us to you.”

Kikka took her eyes off the path and looked at her. Waxy face, cheeks red from the cold, dark hair in a long braid to stay clean — at most a girl she knew once, maybe, in a town of her own, when her community was a group of men and women spending long nights with swords drawn, threatening strangers and darkness alike. She looked like someone she would have protected then, too.

Now, it’s like Kikka can hardly recognize the pleasures of survival. She knows she will not be leaving with them, even if the rest of them call after her.

Behind them, the marching feet stopped. Kikka whirled around.

The man beside Mathias — a scrawny, younger man, with blood on his shirt who’d repeated that it wasn’t his when Kikka first inquired, was staring out into the water, where the slightest ripples and bubbles disturbed the surface. Kikka felt her stomach drop. “There’s someone there,” he said, voice weedy and thin. “It didn’t look like a fish.”

“Don’t stare and keep walking,” Kikka snapped.

His head flew up. “I’m supposed to ignore it? Don’t you think you should do something? It’s clearly waiting —”

“We won’t give it the opportunity. Keep your lamp on and keep following. We’re picking up the pace. Stay calm, and it will grow bored of us.”

The man stared at her. The look was nothing short of dangerous. “No,” he said simply.

Suddenly, he lifted his spear to a throwing position. Even if human weapons couldn’t fatally wound a nixi without a lot of luck, Kikka’s fingers went to the hilt of her sword.

Before he could throw it, Thoren’s arms clamped down around him and he started walking backwards. “Enough Vern. Listen to the Guide,” he said coolly. “Do not agitate what you cannot see clearly. So far, we’ve been lucky.”

“I’m trying to keep it that way!” he snarled, but relented, shoving out of the embrace like he’d been burned. “If you’d listened a week ago we wouldn’t be here now.”

Thoren winced. “There were too many eyes watching our every move. It wouldn’t have been any safer.”

“Yeah? And now they’ve had time to memorize our faces.”

“You didn’t need to wait for my word. You chose to stay,” Thoren said.

“Because I believed you’d get us out safely. And what the hell is this? Sinnlos?!”

“Our only option.” The conversation died abruptly.

Mathias ground his teeth, watching the argument, but said nothing. The other men looked weary, but they stayed close to Kikka, a single lamp between three of them, the other snug in Thoren’s hand. She had a good idea who had probably thrown the first punch at the Guide. The only surprise was that he hadn’t grown agitated and simply left the lot of them to die while he stewed in contempt.

Kikka couldn’t stop the darker thought: if worst came to worst, she already knew which person she hoped would fall in the water first. And hadn’t it been just like that, a life time ago? The loud ones always died first. They didn’t respect the silence. And Sinnlos took that personally.

The men grew restless, but all shifted their attention back to her, and Kikka started forward again. Their lamps pushed her own shadow forward, and suddenly Kikka was following the ghost of herself along the bridges.

“What a loudmouth,” Cordelia muttered. She wrapped her arms around herself.

Kikka halted, then without thinking too hard, shrugged out of her wool cloak and handed it to her. Cordelia held the clothing in shock, then wordlessly slipped into it.

“That will keep you warm even if gets soaked.”

“Thank you.” Cordelia reached back for her child, and Mathias handed the boy back. Kikka waited until they were settled then resumed.

She watched the sky, the low rolling fog, feeling that same darkness trying to smother her as it had done on her first visit. It was true that the pressure came from both sides. There was no paleness, no lightness, just a calm, steady, infinite dark. The water and the sky mirrored each other like a twin abyss. But it wasn’t as frightening as it had once been. Kikka had gotten good at letting her eyes adjust to the dark on the island. Now, she knew it intimately. And when the fog eventually lifted Sinnlos would be the same as anywhere else.

“Remember what I told you,” Kikka started, punctuating every word. “No one gets left behind, not if you follow the rules. And don’t provoke the creatures that you see. They may not be as interested in us as you think.”

“Or you’re lying,” Vern muttered. Someone muttered back to him, but Kikka stopped paying attention.

The only way out of this was through it.

There are parts of the bridges that she still remembers, still thinks about like lonely sheep. Fire licking up their surface, dead ends, old boards that gave way under her weight, and the creatures waiting underneath.

This was a night unlike any other. No nixi called out to each other in the dark, no prowlers lurked in the path waiting to steal away one of her humans — the price of crossing — and nothing went wrong, except for the horrible imaginations one gave into now and then, the trip was made in relative safety.

“What if there’s an emergency — don’t you think I should be prepared.”

How sour the Guide had looked, a million protests on his lips and his face, the half-curl of a snarl starting to form — then he settled, looking appeased. He smoothed his hands across the surface of the table, finger nails digging into the tooth marks Tanith had left so many years ago. He looked at her from under his lashes, calculating. It took her be surprise.

“Alright,” he said, “I’ll tell you the secret. All of the paths lead to the other side. They all meet and condense at the end and there are four entrances and four exits. As long as you head in the direction of your destination, unless someone has destroyed the bridge or its collapsed on its own — there is no reason not to make it to the other side.”

She could have laughed in rage, but she didn’t. “Everything else then…”

“Magical interference.” He curled his fingers. “I won’t apologize for it.”

“Right,” Kikka said, voice flat. “You control the available paths. So if someone is separated from you, it really is the end. That’s a good way to avoid loose threads.”

He frowned. “People should listen and not tempt the laws of Sinnlos to begin with,” he said instead. “It would be infinitely happier, but everyone believes they can be an exception… and there must be consequences for humans to believe the rules from the start.”

Kikka didn’t say anything. Then: “And you’re the law?”

“No. I just enforce it.”

“But you invented it.”

“Yes. I was an arrogant youth.”

“And now?” Kikka prodded. It was all he could take. The Guide directed his frustration at her and stood, the chair scuffing across the floor.

“What difference does it make?”

Everything, Kikka didn’t say.

And now there’s a gray area they haven’t foreseen and couldn’t have predicted: force crossings. A moral dilemma that under other circumstances, would have been treated routinely like everything else.

But that hasn’t happened, tonight. And as Kikka observed these wayward stragglers she wondered if it should have. She already knew who should fall first. It would be easy enough to lose someone in the dark, if she spun too far around the corner, if she called out about an invisible danger and spurned the crossers into a panic. The secret of Sinnlos was that it yearned to be disturbed so that it may have reason to lash out. But the lake was silent, and that felt more dangerous than actual death.

Kikka still wondered, on that night many years ago when she stumbled onto the island after two harrowing nights of burning bridges, and many nights after where she lay in the dark looking up at constellations she’d known all her life, the fog and real, terrifying death just yards away from her sleeping arrangements -- what price she’d actually paid in exchange for the rest of her life. When the Guide had asked her why she’d stayed, and she’d told him she could still help, he’d never believed her. But now she wondered if he’d believed in her from the start, and she was the one who had doubted him because he’d been too dishonest and she couldn’t abide a liar. What if things were always going to play out like this, eventually?

There’s a deep numbness that’s settled in her chest while looking at these people. They don’t know whether to call her friend or foe but look to her anyway, forced to trust her because every other pathway has been stolen from them, and Kikka realizes all at once that that heavy feeling, that dissatisfaction, the outrage, the feelings of being left behind by an entire community without anyone coming to look for even her corpse — loss.

Kikka stopped feeling human when she stopped living like one. And now, their arrival was another painful reminder of journeys she’ll never be a part of again.

Kikka lead the refugees through the night. Though there was a marked absence of prowlers or even a patrol, just the terrifying normalcy of bending wood, fog, and roving eyes in the dark was enough to keep everyone on their toes.

Kikka tried not to think about it: whether the nixi were being harpooned like fish while she walked the other direction. She turned the Guide’s face over in her head, the dullness and marked absence of any real commitment to these people a clear sign of his intention to not care for them. It was a turning point that had always rapidly been coasting toward them.

She hadn’t believed the crossings had ever been just or sensible, but how does a nixi not become ruled by fear when you can’t leave or reason?

Kikka had not been on the bridges, nor set foot off the island for nearly a decade. Were it not for the Guide’s comings and goings and the changes in the weather, she’d have never kept track of the time at passed her by. And time in Sinnlos felt non-existent. Days were determined by sprouts or frost in the garden, ruled by bridges, constantly shrouded by the fog and far away from her advances to seize them.

While Lu in particular had worked to give her some happiness, she wondered if she hadn’t only made life far more complex than any of them wished to feel.

“Are you the Guide’s lass? That he’d trust you with this work…”

Kikka rattled out of her reverie. Vern’s expression was sour but she didn’t linger on it. She stared fixedly at a point in the distance, sliding her dry hand to another nook on the staff.

“I’m his student and a friend,” she answered calmly. “An associate, if you like. We run a business.”

The man on his other side spat into the water. The two of them were apparently close, even if Vern’s attitude got him in trouble. “That one must spend most of his time with the books. So aloof!” he pitied. “Where’d you come from? South? You look like a southerner. You like this dead country?”

“It’s beautiful, if hostile. I lived in Drummer for a long time before I came this way.”

“It only gets worse the further you go,” he murmured. “It’s what we get for being greedy for land instead of building better units in the cities.” A series of “ayes” followed shortly, the men falling deadly quiet. They shuffled forward under the cloak of darkness, the cloak of light only touching their faces.

“Hemer was going to be a beautiful town. It was nestled in rolling hills and the sky looked like it could have gone on forever,” Thoren said. “But it was vulnerable and too remote.”

Mathias sighed. “All those fields were burned in the entire valley. The mills that held the years previous crop were spoiled from the heavy winter and mold grew in the store houses. The worst bout of luck I’d ever heard, I thought once. But of course it was strangers dipping their hands in it for money.”

If only you knew, Kikka thought grimly. Like the unfairness of it all ever left her, only that wound was soothed in the absence of a new agitation, the Guide carefully kept his crossings far removed from her, and his knowledge of them and all the information he gathered was impartial less it serve their conversation. Lu revealed far more to her, but surely he knew more than he let on and chose not to act on it. It’s hard to forgive that, but Kikka suddenly knows why.

“Could you tell me,” she started carefully, “when Hemer’s decline started?”

“Eight years ago? On the border, between Kern and Teyfern, those northern lands were home to a lot of military deserters. They were hired and discharged and never received the benefits they were promised. Hemer would have been fine had its successes not emboldened the thieves.”

“It was a target of conflict for a lot of different reasons, right?”

Thoren smiled at her. “I try not to consider the political ones anymore. Too exhausting. Don’t tell our king I said this, but he should have let the country that frequently starves work the lands that it needed to survive.”

“Mm.” Kikka smiled wryly. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“But to continue, the town was made up of mostly farmers. They didn’t know how to defend themselves. But the time it took to send reinforcements usually amounted to higher casualties. If the raiders believed they wouldn’t have a chance to steal for a month or two, they’d turn the town inside out. This happened for years. Eventually, the survivors fled, or they begged pardon in Teyfern for a chance at citizenship. Hemer was just too hard to hold onto.”

“You were a guard.”

“Captain, once. The men here came from all over. I decided it was time to leave too. We all met on the road.”

They were quiet, after that. No one wanted to say that they had expected more.

Kikka’s heart ached. Her sword hung at her side. Were she not abiding the laws of the people who had shown her mercy, she knew where her place in this world was.

“And you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Vern squinted at her. “What were you, before an apprentice?”

She smiled tentatively. “A guard.”

“How’d you wind up here?”

“I met the Guide,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. “I felt like his work aligned with my own.” A half-truth. Vern didn’t ask anything else.

She thought of the journey these people would have to make without her. Part of her demanded that she saw them off to the very end, protecting them from any wayward harm — but the other half demanded that she shake her hands loose of them and return to the family who’s safety was more questionable than her own.

Kikka stared off into the dark. The Guide’s staff was smooth and well worn in her hands. If she imagined his grip on it, his righteous fury at her merry band years ago as they poked and prodded and demanded things from him he could not give, the actions he could not take without betraying himself seemed so obvious. But that situation had been so different from this. At that time, they could have still gone around, and maybe stood a chance.

These people were already dead. There’s a difference. They have nothing left to lose. So Kikka can’t feel too terrible about the circumstances that have brought them here. Is one choice really a choice at all?

They walked through the endless dark, their twelve footsteps loud and unnatural in the night, spreading dark lines like roots into the empty spaces behind them.

Suddenly, Kikka wondered if she’d be able to turn back.

She wondered if the Guide had more than one reason for excusing himself so suddenly. But the thought was quickly lost.

There — in the distance — a trembling, blue shoreline. Everyone’s relief was palpable.

“We’ve made it,” Cordelia said.

Then an arrow shot out of the darkness and struck the man behind her in the shoulder. He toppled boneless onto his back on the bridge, feet dangling off into the water. They’re so surprised that no one moves, panic making them still and silent.

The man, very quietly, started to groan.

“Quickly, shut him up!” Mathias hissed. The boy next to him started stripping off a layer of fabric. They shoved it over the wounded man’s mouth like a gag and he clutched at the hand in quiet agony.

Cordelia crouched on the bridge with her lamp, her child holding still and silent and nearly not moving at all. The remainder of the troop followed suit, spreading thin and flat along the tired planks of the bridge, and Kikka watched the organized chaos with detached emotion.

Not a minute later, another arrow whistled pass into their glow. It sailed harmlessly over Vern’s head before disappearing into the water behind him.

“The lamps,” Mathias growled. “They’re giving us away!”

Thoren turned on hands and knees toward Kikka. “We’re almost there anyway, can’t we blow them out? I haven’t seen a single creature in this place --”

“No!”

They froze. Kikka sucked in a breath through her clenched teeth. She wanted to scream. A nearly perfect evening was being shattered by an enemy she hadn’t anticipated and she had no intention of letting anyone be killed except by their own hand. “We need them to keep the creatures at bay. The best thing we can do is to go back, out of range of our shooter.”

Vern’s protest was nearly a shout. “Back?! After this? The bridges will sink and we’ll die!”

Kikka glared. “I’m doing my best to keep you alive. For this to work, I need you to listen and do this for me.”

“It’s true, what they say about the Guide then. You don’t care about people at all.”

Kikka stared at Vern. “Perhaps I care too much. Before I came here I was a guard. The sword is not for show. While you move out of reach of the archers, with lamps lit, I will move forward and see if I can create a way forward.”

“You won’t go alone. I don’t trust that you won’t leave us.” He glared frostily, stance strong and unyielding, ready for a fight.

Kikka considered quickly. His eyes stared haughtily into hers, daring her to counter him, and she grew still and calm at the sight. It was like she was twenty-one all over again and holding Bemelle’s arm, telling him not to do something unreasonable. But they were just scared. Scared people do stupid things.

“Alright,” Kikka relented. “But I can’t guarantee your safety like this.”

“I don’t need looking after. I promise I’ll cut them down swifter than you.”

Kikka nodded her head. “Good.” She turned. “The rest of you. Stay away from the edges of the bridge, and keep your lanterns lit. Move further back. Our distance is plenty far, my concern is that someone has tried to cross on their own. The two of us will dispatch them, and then I’ll return for you. Do not advance on your own.”

“If you don’t come back…” Thoren began. His expression was grim.

“Then you lose nothing by running. You see the shore. You know the way.” He turned back to the wounded man and patted him along the cheek.

“Here, Lady Severton…” Kikka turned the staff over in her hands, the worn wood soft and greasy under her fingers. She didn’t want to part with it, but it did her no good to carry a light unless she planned to bait herself.

Cordelia took it, bringing the heavy end close to herself. The boy turned in her arms to stare at it. His dark eyes looked huge in his face.

“This is important to me. Please keep it safe for now.”

Cordelia’s eyes flicked nervously to Vern, then back to her. Kikka smiled, eyes tight. “As I said,” she finished. “Before I was a guide, I was a guard.”

Vern fell into step beside her. They turned toward the shore, the dark blue light barely bleeding into something slightly warmer, softer, like the day would decide to be a brilliant one in a setting that wasn’t Sinnlos, the end of the magic and obscurity.

“We should see who’s flags are flying first,” Kikka murmured. “Green or Gold. Could be guards from Polyn, sent to scout.”

“Worst guards I’ve ever seen.”

“Then we should expect this to be the military. Could be ours, still.”

“Then they’d willingly murder their own men if it meant less mouths to feed later.”

Kikka was silent. And then: “War is terrible. I am sorry.”

Vern stayed quiet. Their footsteps were silent save for their weight on the bridges, both carefully moving on the balls of their feet. Kikka felt the tension all the way up her back. The truth of the matter was that she hadn’t been in a fight since her first time across Sinnlos, either. “For all the rumors,” Vern started, “I expected to die out here instead. Now I want to make it to the shore.”

“You will. I’ll ensure it.”

Vern looked at her. He looked like a cunning rat, eyes narrow and drawn, dark hair curled limply and flat against his forehead. Disbelief. “We are still in danger from more than just arrows, believe it or not. Look around you,” she snapped. “The water moves.”

He glanced at it, then back at her. “Those creatures you’ve raved so much about have barely moved all night. I’m not worried.”

“That’s a mistake,” Kikka said softly. “They will, with this racket.” She started down the bridge at a soft lope. Vern followed, footsteps heavier and slicker.

The water became shallow, and old trees started to block her line of sight. Kikka moved slowly down the bridge, watching the distance for any movement or sound, and Vern followed stiffly at her shoulder. She ascertained that the archer was going in circles around them, and it made Kikka nervous: there were plenty of prowlers who had become familiar with the edges of their lake, easier to remember, more frequently patrolled, most often occupied or disturbed by passing humans, so how was someone here.

She didn’t want to think that their attacker may not be a blustered, nervous guard: that left her with a small window for getting her companions to the land made bridge, and it wouldn’t be without a fight.

“We should split,” Vern muttered. “This is ridiculous. They’ll keep us walking in circles until the bridges fall.”

“They want us to be careless,” Kikka muttered. “We’re being deliberately herded.”

“We’re close enough to the end that we can do without you. I see no reason to take this risk.”

“Fine.”

Vern scoffed at her and turned on his heel.

Kikka watched him go, tension settling stiff into her shoulders, and quietly began to move in the other direction. She couldn’t waste time if he was determined to risk himself.

This felt more familiar, and more upsetting: being the one on the other side, waiting for the blow to connect.

It was true that armies moved quickly, but unless there were brigands this far south, or a separate class had been sent to clear the way, there was no reason to expect to be met with resistance before the shoreline. Unless someone was already familiar with who would be crossing, or where the Guide would be. If there was someone in their ranks who had betrayed them, someone prone to a temper, or ill-will, or frustration.

Kikka put the pieces together calmly. This was very likely a ruse for taking the Guide hostage. Someone who was trying to prey on his services to move him where they wanted, and her pleading had chosen the wrong time to make sense in his head. He’d looked at what she’d lost and hoped to salvage and the pattern of the world beating down on their world and gave her the opening she had begged for — a plea for humanity: hers for the safe arrival of the refugees.

She wondered what had done it, triggered his senses. He didn’t respond to begging. He certainly hadn’t ever listened to her. Did someone force his hand? Did he know a trap that was laid for him? Did he believe in her instincts and drive to do good will?

Kikka crouched low on the bridge and peered into the water. No one surfaced to stare back and tease her away.

There was no one here to help her.

The trees became thicker, roots curling around the bridge’s legs and into them in some places. The bridge rose in the same spaces every night, and boards were shattered around the trees, like the magic didn’t know how to bend its shape and move around what was in its path. She clambered around the trunk, hand grasping the wet wood.

Before she stepped off, the twang of a bow held in her ears.

The end of the arrow took refuge in her thigh.

Kikka bit the fabric on her shoulder to keep from screaming. Blood thundered to her head and her pulse seemed to propel all the way to the end of the rod. She stared wildly at the direction she thought it had come, then scrambled back the way she came, favoring her leg.

She limped hardly twenty yards into the fog before the stranger stepped out before her.

Clad in heavy armor and a green cloak, he drew back the bow once more.

Kikka slammed flat into the bridge and yelped, the shaft rattling in the muscle. There was the sound of scrabbling, and she made for the water’s edge —

And another guard was standing over her in the darkness, the spear in his hand guarding her movement. He didn’t make to kill her, just observed.

“Coward,” Kikka said flatly.

“Mathen,” the archer said, “You didn’t have to come out here.” Mathen raised his hand. He looked at Kikka, eyes searching hers, and then he moved.

The archer didn’t have time to scream. His neck was broken at an impossible angle and he fell limply over the side of the bridge, body disappearing beneath the black water with barely a splash.

Kikka stared, then tried to follow after, where she could swim some distance away.

Mathen reached down and grabbed the shaft of the arrow and held. Kikka’s vision blacked out for a few long, hazy seconds.

“If you’re from Polyn, I am not leading the King’s men across.”

“I know,” he said. “They’re locals.”

Kikka panted into the wood, head swimming with lightness and air. “And you?”

“You know me, Kikka,” he said flatly. She twisted her head against the board until she was looking at him, the eyes suddenly green and vivid, the grayness beneath his eyes. Unfamiliar.

“I don’t.”

“You do,” he said, angrier. He squatted down. “Why are you here and not the Guide?”

She kept her mouth shut.

Without warning, he twisted the shaft.

Kikka swallowed her yell.

“He refused the summons from both parties and has made enemies of everyone. Now, the army comes from the North for Sinnlos because of his meddling, and the people of the South desperately hope to be able to retaliate by crossing in great numbers. He’s not drawn deep enough lines in the dirt. Everyone thinks they can come from this lake, and what will happen when we are spread so thin that we must surface to kill these creatures on land?”

“I don’t understand,” Kikka breathed. “Who’s side are you on?”

“My kind,” he snarled. “Any associations with humans is a mistake. So long ago, Garvyn tried to lead an expedition across Sinnlos. Do you know what happened? The Guide befriended him. He spent time with him. He spent weeks trying to convince that human that Sinnlos was not to be bothered. And he failed at his negotiations. He could not so simply stop what he started, so he made himself the voice of all of us. He executed Garvyn on the bridges and made us out as monsters. He made a decision that’s trapped us all in this game of charades. But that was a mistake. He should not have taken such a mild route.”

Kikka winced. “Null. You’ve broken from Sinnlos.”

“It’s true. I’m abandoning my name and my work. I can’t stand this slow death. Keeping you was the beginning of our end, but it’s come for us so swiftly now. I like your company, and I think you are unique. But this world that people live in always demands more and more, and there is no changing that unless they leave.”

Null stood. His face whirrled into darkness. “It’s proof that the Guide’s lost his head that he would allow anyone to cross during such tumult. They should not be allowed to live while we bleed for them.”

“They’ve lost plenty,” Kikka snapped. “Meanwhile when Sinnlos is undisturbed, there is nothing that can touch the lake. I agree that the Council’s methods and the Guide’s need work, but surely killing every human won’t remove the burden of your home?”

“I’ll try,” he said. “I am sorry that you’re the one who has to see this. I am even more sorry that the Guide has used you for his own agenda. He’s been in this world for too long already — I had hoped that this would end with him.”

“Violence will not deter anyone,” Kikka argued, but Null shook his head. “Obscurity, for now, is the safest option.”

“Well, that’s lost to us now, isn’t it? The Guide has drawn all attention to our home and there is no avoiding scrutiny.”

“Please, you can still help. You needn’t betray anyone or yourself like this.”

For a bit, the face settled, and an almost smile betrayed his conflicting feelings, like maybe her words had reached him.

“I am sorry. I know you don’t understand our history that well. I will make your end quick. This will be better than being without your kind until your death.”

Kikka scrabbled for the water’s edge, pulling her sword toward her.

Null reached for her head.

At the same time, a hand latched around her ankle and drew her into the water, under the surface of the bridge. Her sword slid across the deck after her and stopped at the edge, blade hanging off. When the water went over head it was almost too much to bear. Kikka covered her nose to keep from inhaling and stayed as still as possible. All around her, the water turned murky, colored by her and the dead man drifting limply nearby.

She didn’t panic, but Kikka blinked rapidly into the darkness, not seeing anything through the murk. The hand around her ankles gripped her bicep instead, and they steadily began to move under the surface with little resistance.

The water splashed somewhere behind them, a dull thud sounded on the bridges above, abstractly filtering through the water cushioning her ears.

Kikka thought she may have passed out, but not even thirty seconds later the hand pulled her upward and she surfaced by the trunk where she’d been shot.

With trembling limbs, she latched on and climbed with numb hands. Sinnlos may have lost its desire to drown her, but it hadn’t grown any warmer.

She wiped the water out of her eyes with the back of her hand.

Lu was holding onto her, eyes red and furious, and he looked like he was between stages of yelling and crying.

A long line of white marred the bridge where the archer had been. A cold numbness settled in her throat.

A good thirty feet away, where the air became thicker and gray, Null lay limp. For a few heavy moments, she thought he was dead.

Before him, Tanith was still and silent, straight backed, looking everything and nothing like the adoring girl that Kikka had watched invite herself into her home time and time again. She looked regal and terrifying at the same time. Whiteness dripped into the water and ran along the cracks. It was hard to believe that the nixi didn’t feel near as much as humans did when in pain.

Null simply sat still, the magic pouring out of him.

“He won’t be reasoned with,” Lu murmured. “This is an unforgivable crime.”

Kikka stared and stared at the sight before her. Brave, sweet Tanith who left teeth marks on her table out of curiosity now had to face the harsh reality of one of her closest betraying her. Kikka didn’t envy that.

“How did you know where to find me?”

Lu pulled her further up out of the water, bent around her like a heavy blanket. “Tanith. I had the right direction, but she knows the bridges even better.”

“But the pier — the invasion —”

“I was worried,” Lu admitted. “Because it was so odd that you would be left alone like that — then, I realized something else —”

Kikka’s vision went fuzzy again and then when her focus returned, Lu was already seeing to her leg.

“He couldn’t have picked a worse spot.”

“It wasn’t meant to be fatal.”

“It still could be,” Lu growled. “And you’ll suffer for a long time. He didn’t do you any favors.”

Kikka sat on her hands to keep from shoving Lu away, the strips of cloth torn from his shirt made into ribbons from the claws his hands adapted.

“Will Tanith be okay?” Kikka murmured. “They’re close.”

“Probably not,” Lu said. He faltered, then glanced up at her under his eyelashes, suddenly ashamed. “It’s hard because she cares.”

Kikka turned her attention to the scene behind them, twisting to glance over her shoulder. “I can understand that.”

Lu pulled the knot tight over her leg and she inhaled sharply. “Sorry,” he said.

“I need to get back soon, before the sun comes up — before this Lu, I was leading people. The Guide came to ask me to do it in his stead —”

“I’m sorry to tell you that they’ve gone on without you.”

She stilled. Vern had probably called for them and in their panic they listened to his directions. It was alright. It had to be that way.

“Did they make it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I need to know.”

“Kikka, just let it go for now —”

“I can’t. Have I ever been good at leaving anyone?”

“No. It’s your best trait.”

“Then help me up. I want to complete the task I was given. Besides, I haven’t seen the shore in the better part of a decade.”

Lu was quiet.

“It’s treason to leave,” he said, finally.

“Unless you’re the Guide.” Kikka clasped his hands. The upper part of her leg was icy and numb. It felt like a boneless sack of potatoes until she put pressure on her foot, and pain jolted all the way down the back of her calf. “Ow. I’ll be coming back. I just need to make sure they’re safe.”

Lu’s unhappy expression told her all she needed to know: he still doubted himself to some extent that he was afraid she would leave him behind. He helped her up anyway.

Kikka cast one more look at Null, who knew his loss and accepted it. Tanith was kneeling before him and talking quietly.

“He won’t survive the trial,” Lu whispered. “They’ll tear him apart.”

“Someone should speak for him. He wasn’t wrong about everything. Those things should be addressed.”

“You?”

“Me,” she said. Lu sighed, and then they began hobbling down the bridges, over the large trunk of the tree that grew into their path and to the other side.

The crossers knew danger intimately, so when Kikka limped off the bridge and onto real land, she didn’t have to walk far at all to know she would never catch a trace of them again. The pier lay in a gully between two large pines with a footpath that stretched forward into the trees. The moss was so thick that it hung in brown and green drapery. High above, the sky was turning a pale yolk, and the real sun would climb over the final stretch in only a few more minutes.

She walked down the road a short distance. Just far enough so that when she turned, she could no longer see Sinnlos or its fog.

Kikka went no further.

The Guide’s staff was abandoned against a short pine. Kikka knocked the back of her hand against the lantern and the residual heat told her all she needed to know.

The lot of them were far ahead of her. No one was coming back to say goodbye.

It was exactly as it should be.

Regardless, Kikka stood on the bank for a long time, until the sun pulled itself free of the dark. The bird call was different here and so was the wind. Sinnlos could not temper anything past its reach. Strangely, she didn’t feel any different like she’d thought.

She’d told herself that she’d accepted that she could not go back to the realm of humans, that becoming part of Sinnlos had changed her. Now, she was uncertain. She couldn’t go back for other reasons. Her family was here. The nixi were, while not completely innocent, not deserving of the blow that was being delivered. They’d made enemies of the Republic and it would not be a simple journey back from the scheme the Guide had pursued for so many years now.

But if she could cart people like this, refugees or allies or merchants, to the other side, then her goal was more concrete.

Tonight was made possible because for whatever reason, the Guide trusted her. And that was all it took to her to be useful.

But Kikka wished she could pull the curtain back, see what was on the other side of all this uncertainty. War and invasions and politics were less familiar than they once had been. Certain things made sense innately, because it was easy enough to put herself in another’s shoes and imagine what she would do — but trying to reason with a foreign invader about a magical lake and the shape-shifters that resided in it was barely accessible to her.

Limping, Kikka turned down the trail back in the direction of the bridge. It’s offshoot would soon fall. It may do her no good to climb now but she believed the Guide wouldn’t simply let her drown.

The greenery became less dark and more murky, and the familiar trees and landscapes made her eyes water. She massaged the area around her wound and shoved her tears back. She’d picked, she reminded herself. And now, she couldn’t have both.

Lu was quietly waiting for her a little ways down the bridge. He stared at her with large eyes. “I still can’t believe you left,” he said. “I hope no one saw you.”

“I came back,” she returned. “I had something to collect. It makes a good crutch, too.”

“For a stick,” he hissed. “Don’t tell anyone you left, Kikka. It’s treason, you know.” Then he rushed her, arms flying around her frame to squeeze her. She realized dimly that he was bleeding, white goo coagulating along his shoulder and sneaking along the back of his leg. She didn’t have to ask. Tanith and Null were long gone.

“Even when humans set out to kill each other,” Lu started slowly, “somehow, we still get involved. I just never thought you’d have to deal with any of it ever again.” Kikka laughed weakly. Her leg was starting to throb deeply now that the adrenaline had worn off, and Lu’s concern made her want to give in and be weak, just for a little while.

“Is everyone…?”

“I don’t know. I ordered my patrol to go on without me.” He shook his head. “I mean, you’ve seen me in action, you know we heal really well, but, you know… it still doesn’t do us any good if our head gets lopped off. But they’re probably fine! We had the advantage in the water. If anything, the humans are the ones who suffered tonight.”

“And the Guide?”

His mouth quirked. “Fine. Really, really pissed when I saw him. Even more of a jerk than usual. He’s furious with himself, and probably you. The Matriarch…” he trailed off. Kikka doesn’t pry: she can imagine. The Guide will be under fire for multiple reasons. She’s not innocent either.

“Mmm,” Kikka accepted.

“There will be a trial for him. Later. When we’re done bleeding all over each other.”

“You first,” Kikka said.

“I’m always guilty of something. Being a captain makes me immune to some things, however.” Lu smiled and tugged on her arm. “Kikka, let’s go home.”

Yes, she echoed, exhaustion sinking in. Let’s.

The way back to the island was reserved just for her. But it was not hard to tell that war had come to Sinnlos, as the bridges groaned and cried under foot, huge pieces of wood schlepping of into the water like sand, and the way back was made on unsteady feet. She felt like a drunken sailor. She wanted nothing more than to put the night behind her and crawl into her grass stuffed bed, pile a load of blankets on herself and later roast by the fire.

But that depended on several things. She could tread water. But not that much.

Lu walked with her the whole way, equally spent. The sun was continuing to rise and burn the fog when suddenly, a figure could be made out walking unsteadily through the light fog toward them.

It stopped and started, then moved faster, hands coming out from beneath a green cloak to grip them both by the shoulders. The whole world swayed for a moment, the real sun a blinding obelisk behind this person’s head. The bridges groaned with exhaustion beneath the three of them but held.

“The north pier?” Lu inquired.

“Lost. We tore it out of the ground. Soldiers will have to swim to reach the bridges when they rise at night now.”

“Good thinking,” Kikka murmured. “The western shore?”

“Also in pieces, but as a precaution. There were no soldiers. I was given false information. I’m sure you can guess by who at this point,” he growled.

Lu’s fingers dug into her side. “Tanith took care of Null. It will be a ugly trial later.”

“Yes. And the refugees?” the Guide asked. His voice was hesitant. Kikka held his gaze evenly.

“Safe. One was wounded. I don’t know if he died on the run to the shore.”

“You took the right path. You listened to me.”

“Yes. But we were unlucky anyway.”

The Guide nodded. Water dripped from the ends of his hair onto her face. She hadn’t realized he’d stepped so close. Lu looked at the Guide, then looked at Kikka.

“You put her in a bad spot. The time to listen to us was years ago, not in the middle of a war with high tensions.”

The Guide closed his mouth and breathed through his nostrils, slow and steady. “On the contrary, I think it was an opportunity to change. However, I was not expecting that it would be undermined. I had thoughts that Null and I would fight eventually, but. Not like this.” The Guide bowed his head to them both. “I am sorry for putting you in greater danger than I realized.”

Lu was so still she wondered is he was ignoring him. When she turned to look at him, his face was contorted in agony. “You’ll be punished. You’ve never been punished. The elders will be furious with you for making a decision on your own,, especially the Matriarch. They may want to execute you. Don’t you get it?”

“I’ll face them accordingly.”

“You could die,” Lu snapped. “And wouldn’t that all be for nothing?”

The Guide smiled at him. “I appreciate your concern, Lu. But I’ve been hated for a long time. And this time I’m not sure I can argue to protect you for leaving your post either.” Lu winced.

Taking a deep breath, he turned his attention to Kikka, seemingly looking right through her. She tried to straighten, and Lu hurried to steady her, bracing his side against hers.

“You came back,” he said, voice flat. “Why?”

Kikka stared at him. “What do you mean, why? Where would I go?”

He tossed his chin. “Far away, from all this, I’d expect. Home, maybe. You could have fled with the refugees. You could have picked up the sword again.”

“Fled,” Kikka said softly. “From what?”

He stayed silent for a moment or two. “We wouldn’t have been able to pursue you.”

“Don’t lie.” She contemplated him. “You wanted me to leave? With the army beating down the bridges?”

“You’d have maybe stood a chance.”

“Or I’d bleed out in a ditch, and you could live guilt free believing I’d made it somewhere where I’d be with my kind.” Kikka shook her head. Then swayed again, and had to reach out to grip his own arms to stay upright. Her leg had moved past the icy tingling into a steady numbness. It was like her heart beat had shifted downward in her body and was trying to crawl out from under the bandages. The Guide seemed to notice for the first time, and the bridges began to rattle threateningly again, a horrible jigsaw under their feet. The Guide stepped back carefully and glanced down. He grimaced.

“Null’s hatred runs deep. I should have guessed the call to the shore was a trick, to lure me away. My people have been moved to this…”

“It’s not new,” Lu muttered. “You’ve just always disregarded threats because no one could do anything anyway.”

“You make it sound like favoritism.”

“A long time ago, I was going to be killed for something significantly lesser.”

“I helped write those rules,” the Guide snapped. “They were meant to prevent a repeat of the stupidity I brought upon us!” Lu’s arm tightened around Kikka and she released her grip, preparing to step away. The Guide glared at them both then caught her wrist, exhaling forcefully, holding them in place. “Clearly it didn’t work if we’re now at each other’s throats while a bigger threat seizes our shores. That’s just another reason Kikka should turn around and leave with the people she saved.”

“Are you hearing yourself right now? How far do you think she can go on this, huh? Even if Kikka wanted to flee, she can’t, because she was busy trying to help you!”

The Guide’s frustration finally abandoned him. “I know. All Kikka does is help. I thought now would be the time for her to help herself!”

“Are you tired of it?” Kikka asked. “Me?”

Both of them quieted.

“You’ve done more than you can fathom,” the Guide said.

“You’re my best friend. How could I grow tired of your generosity and good humor?”

Kikka shivered. “I’ve been wrong before.”

“You’re not now,” Lu said. He shook her shoulder, then tossed his head at the Guide. “Forget all this. Let’s talk later, before we all fall down.”

“I was quicker,” Kikka said. “I’ve had worse injuries.” The Guide’s mouth quirked and he squeezed her wrist in his hand. The pressure felt good and Kikka blinked at him, fatigue dropping like a hot blanket over her shoulders.

“I wouldn’t call getting sliced open luck for your kind. Kikka. Kikka.”

She startled and opened her eyes.

“I want to go home,” Kikka muttered. Lu flinched. “Home,” she said again.

The Guide didn’t startle, nor sigh, nor give much of a reaction at all. He simply fell into step beside her. “It’s a long way back. I can’t keep the bridges up. We’ll have to swim. Can you do it?”

“Just don’t let go,” Kikka groused. “I’ll sink.”

“Alright.”

They started walking down the bridges, Kikka’s leg protesting beneath her. The Guide lead the way, and there were no threads or tricks to keep her close, no illusions; he gripped her hand and didn’t let go.

The lake was icy cold. It jolted her awake when the bridges gave way and they toppled feet first, but no one broke their promise. The journey back to the island was made in relative silence, save for their limbs moving rhythmically across the water, Kikka floating like a log down a river. Dead weight.

Kikka doesn’t remember the walk back to the house. Someone must have carried her.

“Where’s your cloak,” the Guide muttered. She tried to tell him.

“How’s her leg?”

“Fine,” Kikka answered.

“It was gushing,” Lu said. “Arrow head was in deep.”

Someone moved her leg and she sat upright in pain.

“Sorry, sorry,” Lu said.

“Kikka, I’m going to cut these.”

“Alright,” she yielded. It was the Guide’s practiced hand that had tended to all her stupid wounds over the years — but this one she could only guess he took personally.

Both the nixi worked in silence and Kikka tried not to be a terrible patient. Wounds like hers were most susceptible to blood poisoning, a kind of death she had no desire to experience.

The cleaning was the most painful and so was the stitching — when the bandages finally came out from the cupboard by the door to signal the end of the prodding, Kikka sighed in relief. Lu mussed her hair and she swatted at him.

“I suppose someone ought to tell the rest of the patrol that we’ve reconvened.”

Lu stood and stretched, then disappeared into the bedroom to return with a pillow which he tucked under Kikka’s head. She squeezed his arm gratefully.

“Thank you for coming to find me,” she said. “I don’t think I said that before.”

“Thank Tanith when you see her. She was pretty scared for you. And don’t ever thank me. It’s not needed.”

The Guide leaned around Kikka for a wet towel and mopped his hands clean. “I’ll follow you shortly,” he said vaguely.

“Better. I don’t want to be under fire alone,” Lu muttered. And then he was stepping out into the yellow morning and gently closing the door behind him.

The fire crackled loud and clear in the room. Kikka believed her heart beat was probably louder.

For a few seconds, she didn’t dare speak. She was too exhausted for this conversation, but it was better to have it now than later, while the Guide was still receptive.

“Did you actually care if those people survived? Or did you just want me gone?”

“Not gone, safe.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

He sighed heavily. “No. You’re here in a house my kind built for you. That’s as disarming as it can be.”

“Then why are you so determined to push me away?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t get angry either. He simply continued to clean his fingers with the towel, struggling to get her blood out from under his fingernails. Kikka had half a mind to reach out and shake him. She had never take him for a coward, so what was this?

“I’ve spent many years with Null at my side. I never expected he’d commit to such an act unless he truly believed it.”

“He made it sound like he hates you from what I heard. He held you responsible for drawing attention to Sinnlos.”

“I’m unsurprised. He wasn’t wrong, either.”

“I think you’ve gone enough rounds with that conversation to last multiple lifetimes. Whether you were right or wrong, things still turned out like this.”

“They did,” he agreed. “I was the one who believed that we’d last at least a little longer.”

“Nothing’s over,” Kikka stressed. “No one’s dead.”

“Not yet. But you could have been. And that would have been my doing.”

Kikka touched the bandage on her leg. The skin was hot and tender beneath it, inflamed and angry with her. “Many years ago, my death would have been meant nothing.”

“We were strangers then. And now we’re not.”

“I didn’t think we were either. But then you tried to send me away.”

Whatever careful faced he’d been maintaining finally crumpled. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you Kikka, but you’re doomed if we keep you here.”

“Look around you,” Kikka muttered. “Does this look like the home of a prisoner?”

“A very well-kept one.”

“Have I ever asked to leave? Have I ever tried to build a boat or a raft and escape?”

“I’m sure you’ve thought about it.”

“Of course. In the beginning. But I don’t think about it anymore. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I don’t belong anywhere else now.”

The Guide tossed the soiled rag into the fire where the coals smoked and hissed angrily at its dampness. He pivoted on his knees and tugged the waiting blanket off the back of a chair before covering her in it.

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Kikka reached for him. “Come here.”

He eyed her wearily. “I will go convene with the Elders to decide how we’ll advance from here. Null will be punished accordingly. Lu may get a slap on the wrist, but I will speak for him. I will have to accept whatever punishment I’m given for the frustration I’ve caused so many.”

“I want to stay with you,” Kikka said. “Come here.”

He was quiet and still beside her and then her hands were in his hair, combing through the lake damp tendrils. He smelled like smoke from the fire.

“Kikka.”

He tugged on her arm gently, than insistently, until Kikka slid sideways against his knees. She inhaled his grief and exhaustion without much more thought than simple pleasure. The guilty part of her mind told her she’d betrayed the last part of herself she had to lose, but then his arms circled her waist to hold her instead. He was as guilty as her but maybe this was the way they could mend what had been broken between the nixi and humans for so long, and finally, Kikka stopped thinking.


	3. profoundal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue.

If this was an ending it felt the same as every other day on the island: a little busier than usual, but it was the anticipation of a storm causing the pacing. Out in the Meeting Place along the south shore, deep among the rocks, not a single nixi could be seen above the surface. Kikka knew they were out of sight for a reason: they didn’t want to accept the fate about to befall their family.

No one was looking forward to seeing the Guide on trial. She’d watched his face flush with contempt for himself when he spoke only hours before and knew everyone’s patience was running thin with him. For once, he had no solution to the problems they faced at the shores.

After all, there were plenty of evils worse than monsters in the world.

But for some reason, he had still chosen to put his faith in her. Kikka had to believe it counted for something.

But Null would be first. His hatred had to be dealt with. The decades of frustration the nixi held for humans would not easily be shed, or it may never change, but Kikka hoped that no one would follow his example by inviting willing strangers across their shores.

And Lu would be fine, she was certain. His crimes had been shared by many over the years, what was one more?

Kikka pulled her hair up off the back of her neck. She mopped it uneasily, small hairs sticking unpleasantly, and she stank of dirt and sweat. There was nothing to be done about that. There was no time. When the Matriarch called for the meeting, they dropped their work and ran.

Once upon a time, Kikka had thought she’d be slaying evils of the non-human kind. She didn’t think she’d be seen as one of them.

The Guide came to find her on the rocky outpost. He’d stopped the pretense of lighting the lantern with her long ago, though he noticed her sitting in darkness he lit it anyway. She’d have lectured him on wasting oil on her since she’d grown accustomed to the dark, but realized later that it made him uncomfortable to watch her pale and grow sallow, nearly translucent in the permanent twilight of Sinnlos.

Kikka squinted up at him. Her leg was starting to throb again.

“The Matriarch will be here soon.” He gestured at the sword in her lap. “Are you preparing to skewer her?”

“Of course not,” Kikka muttered. “Lu had to fish this out of the lake. It’s rusting now. I’m just cleaning it.”

“You should have some fear. She’ll be offended if you’re not a little cowed.”

“I’m not sure I can improve her impression of me.”

“You won’t,” he said smoothly, “because I already have.”

She startled, then didn’t say anything more.

“You can put out the light, it hurts my eyes a bit.”

The Guide looked at her. “Don’t look at it then, just stand in it.”

Kikka sat quietly for a while. But soon enough, the tense calm was too much.

“What did you do?”

He looked sideways at her. “I offered a compromise. If you’re willing, it could solve many of our problems.”

“You should be specific. I don’t want to be surprised.”

“I may resign from my post. I had a replacement in mind.”

Kikka gaped.

“You know more than most,” he said simply. “We’re in a war now, whether we like it or not. You have the advantage at this work. You may even change the course of it.”

“When did you start being the optimist,” Kikka murmured.

“You don’t believe me,” he said, and that was what surprised him.

The Guide sighed and crouched down to her level, heedless of the sword so close to his chest.

“I would like to say I know the way forward, but I don’t think I can trust myself anymore. Not after… all of this.”

“So long ago you once said that you thought you’d ruined me. But I think being here has made me better.”

The corners of his mouth turned up.

“For a worst case scenario,” Kikka murmured, “I thought it might we worth checking if Sinnlos drained into any rivers. If this home is no longer viable, maybe we could look elsewhere.”

“One thing at a time,” he said. He squeezed her shoulder and stood.

They prepared to meet the Matriarch face to face with their proposition.


End file.
